You will find below a poem that I wrote for a homework 'assignment' from a good couple of months back now. It was not long after that earthquake hit us (I slept through the whole thing) and with it being a fairly recent event it was suggested that for our 'homework exercise' we write something to do with tremors. I did my usual trick of waiting until the day before the following meeting before bothering to try and write something to take along to the meeting to read out and ended up knocking this poem out in about half an hour before I went to bed. I decided to look at the concept of a 'tremor' in a more metaphorical than literal sense - as you will see when you read it I'm not actually going on about an actual tremor from an earthquake. No, I'm going for that old 'I saw the love of my life and the world shook' kind of angle.
To be honest, I don't particularly care for this poem (it's all too obvious that it was a rush job) but someone in the group who has read it (and shall remain nameless) keeps telling me to post it on the blog. So now I have. And I suppose it is about someone I knew. But it's probably one of those subconscious autobiographical inflections that enters most people's writing. Or so I think...
Anyway, enough contextualising/jabbering, here it is:
TREMOR
As your eyes caught mine
I could have sworn
The earth shook with a tremor
Or maybe it was just me
My heart palpitating
When I looked at you
As you spoke to me
I could have sworn
The earth shook with a tremor
Or maybe it was just me, again,
As my voice quivered
Saying those 'three little words'
As you walked away
I could have sworn
The earth shook with a tremor
Or maybe it was just me, as ever,
As tears flowed
And my heart broke
Written by Andrew Marsden
