"Drizzle" by Christie Gibson

No bright flashes or thunderous booms
Just pitter-patter, pitter-patter.
Walking that familiar trail,
The trees beside me darker than usual.

Plip. Plip. Plunk.
Steps muffled by wet reds and oranges
Yellows, too
Letting the water drip, drip, drip,
Soak through the thick cotton
To the clammy skin beneath

A squirrel scrambling upwards
Bringing acorns to its cache
Resting a moment
Before dashing out again
Into the damp
Squish. Squish. Squish.

The autumn chill pushing arms towards the torso
Teeth clicking like a cicada.
The sky indifferent, solemnly gray,
Void of true color
With no chance of a rainbow.

Critiques:

-There's a lot to like here; rhyme and rhythm cooperate, nice use of repetition and colors. Good sense of the squirrel's energy. Christie captures the sense of walking in the woods in a drizzle nicely. Taut lines, good line breaks. The last stanza moves the poem away from the direction it's been going. From the simple pleasures of the walk we enter a bleak, almost hopeless moment. I'm not sure about this shift; it does, however, nicely capture the suddenness of ambivalence, the way our emotions can cycle so quickly from the ordinary to despair. Which gives the reader something to consider, something to THINK about; that is the mark of good poetry, that it leaves more questions than answers.

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