Analysis of Life on the Edge

William Goresko 1951 (Philadelphia, PA) – 2008 (Willow Grove, PA)



Billions of iridescent butterflies
Softly thrash the air, turning the noon sky
To dusk, slowly falling,
Like fat snow flakes,
Thickly blanketing the land
Under a layer of rustling parchment.

Hatchlings lie on their sides,
Still and alone, mouths frozen wide,
Large, dark eyes, sealed
By gossamer films of skin,
Blindly staring up
Through branches at the sky.

The cougar and the wolf that roamed
Across mesas and through forests
Hunting others long since gone,
Have themselves
Become shadows and memories
Slipping away with each setting sun.

First as lakes, then as rivers
Flowing through arteries into the sea
At whose breasts we suckle,
Waters which once were home
To dense schools of fish
Are now poisoned and bear bitter fruit.

What is this strange and silent spring
Where leaves turn mottled and brown
And flowers shrivel and die,
Where the air hangs heavy and dank
With a suffocating smell
And stars burn dim in the sky?

Here we sit in air-conditioned boxes
Within smoking towers of glass and steel
Torn from raw gouges in the ground,
Asking one another
Why these fierce and endless summers,
While in all directions
Our hissing machines
Dart to and fro
Spewing gaseous excretions
And our erstwhile leaders
Tell us to be calm,
They need more evidence
That the end is near.

We are indifferent caretakers
Asleep at the wheel,
Driving along dark cliffs,
A step behind the many
We've forced over the edge
Who lie broken
And extinguished
Below.

On this tiny beacon, we hurtle through empty space.


Scheme ABCXXX XXXXXB XXXXXD EFXXXX CXBXXB XGXXEXXHAEXXX EGXFXDXH X
Poetic Form
Metre 10101010 1010110011 111010 1111 1010001 1001011010 11111 10011101 1111 1100111 10101 110101 01000111 0110110 1010111 101 0110100 100111101 1111110 1011000101 111110 101101 11111 111001101 11110101 1111001 0101001 10111001 101001 0111001 1110101010 0110101101 1111001 101010 11101010 101010 101001 1101 101001 010110 11111 111100 10111 1101010 01101 100111 0101010 111001 1110 0010 01 1110101101101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,447
Words 255
Sentences 8
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 13, 8, 1
Lines Amount 52
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 151
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted by cuwoodford on June 01, 2021

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:16 min read
8

William Goresko

William Goresko was an avid landscape photographer, a lover of backpacking and the outdoors, a voracious reader of classical literature and ardent fan of classical music as well as 60s rock and folk music. He also loved cooking and watching Sixers basketball games. He was a floor sander by trade. In 1984 at age 32 he was rendered quadriplegic in a car accident and lived for 24 more years. He retained his love of life and had a strong will to live. All poems were written a few years after the accident, typed one letter at a time, using a sip and puff device. Poems were submitted by his wife Cheryl. more…

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