Analysis of in anticipation
Kim Briggeman 1955 (Deer Lodge, Montana)
When you see your first buttercup – oh! heresy! –pick it.
Hold it in your palm. Notice what your hand looks like.
Consider it against broken clouds, the history of your town,
war.
Questions:
Sixteen galaxies away, would your buttercup mean the same?
Did Jesus pick the “little frogs” in hills above Nazareth,
run home to organize with stubby fingers
in an earthen vessel for Mom?
Or young Schweitzer, in the Alsace-Lorraine --
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben -
even then the seeds germinating toward
charged and tortured reverence of life?
What about Quixote?
Did he pick buttercups before he got the rap?
Beelzebub, until he got too fat?
Pluck a petal. Feel remorse?
Would a second make it easier?
Every part of a buttercup is toxic:
the green refuge of sepals,
each he-man stamen brandishing
its torch of pollen sacs,
even the glossy petals, five or,
rarely, six, unvarnished in their
waxen star-struck power.
Ingestion of too many can cause colic,
diarrhea, hypocrisy or insight.
Too few and you’ll find yourself
right back at the top of this poem.
Scheme | X AXB CX XXX XXXX XX X XD XCXXBXD AXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111110110011 110111011111 0101011010100111 1 10 01100011110101 110101010101100 1111011010 01101011 1110000101 11110 10101101 101010011 101010 11110011101 1011111 1010101 101011100 10011010110 011011 1111100 111101 100101011 10101001 11110 0101110111 010010011 1101101 111011110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,133 |
Words | 209 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1, 2, 7, 4 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 82 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 18 |
About this poem
Inspired years ago by March in Montana.
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