The snow is falling gently, it’s quite all around
Everyone’s in their own world, on the streets there’s not a sound,
Lights are twinkling brightly, indicating there’s life within
But not in Gordon’s heart, he’s soaked to the skin
His feet ache with the frost bite, his clothes have seen better days
A cardboard box his only friend at night in which he lays
He trudges through the snow
He has nowhere to go
This Christmas will be lonely, nowhere to call home
Life wasn’t always like this, always on the roam
Once he had a family, a house by the sea
A wife, a family, children, one, two, three
But then life took a tumble and everything went wrong
He lost the family that once was so strong
A fire took his home, his family and his wife
And left him with a lost and lonely life
So spare a thought for Gordon and people just like him
And realise that maybe your life is not so grim
D’you know, there’s a message in these words that quite literally comes as much from the delivery as it does from the words themselves. You set-up your reader to feel an ironic comfort, what with the cadence of the words chosen. There is a rhythm we feel we know enough of to lower our guard; our expectations primed for what we think is simply going to be a continuation of Gordon’s woes, but then you trip up your reader with the stilted metre. We no longer have the expected rhythm. In fact we are forced to reestablish that rhythm; indeed any rhythm because that’s what we need. It is only afterwards, when the significance of our added effort to make sense of what we have read, that the similarity with just how Gordon’s life had, in an instant, changed from a comfort he had no reason to think would not continue, to one where everything has changed. What remains at the close of this piece is the charity, and how that in itself is given greater importance by us, your readers, because those words have been read in a pattern we ourselves fought to establish. You make the charitable words our own thoughts. Now one of two thoughts are fighting for supremacy in my mind: you either set out, quite intentionally, to create a double-message with such creative control. In which case: Well done, Tina.
Either that, or you have penned a simple verse of cautionary tale for us to dwell on, and that I am overthinking the whole thing. Either way, the interpretation stands. If that is what your words have encouraged; then Well done, Tina.
Also, I can’t but notice your use of a few words has resulted in me going on, and on… 🙄
LikeLike