Young Writers Society

The Sky


I lay tranquilly on the warm summer grass
Watching the graceful clouds fleeting elegantly past.
Clouds: transparent in their beautiful shades of ruby red and ochre,
Passing gently on a summers breeze.


Forever gliding across an open canvas,
Leaving an eternal gape in the heavens,
Their passing is hardly perceived by us,
Who hustle and jostle through a forever changing world.


Clouds like us move through this life,
Without a pause or a fleeting respite,
And yet evermore shall they linger on,
Like the dreams of a haunting memory.

Nice!!! Nice and short and sweet....you did this well I like the second verse.

There's something about it that bothered me... not quite sure what.

Watching the graceful clouds fleeting elegantly past.
This line in particular...

I don't know... I didn't really like it.

I think what's wrong with that line is that you've got two words that have very close meanings right next to each other. Technically, it's all right, but it seemed really empty.

I never understood why I read in many many places that you should use as few adverbs as possible until I read the first verse. It's really wordy, but it's not just the adverbs.

I lay tranquilly on the warm summer grass <--Making tranquil an adverb is unnecessary and makes the line sound kind of awkward. Plus I think lay should be lie. I'm no grammar expert but it sounds really weird when you try to say it out loud. In fact, reading your poem out loud to yourself is a great way to notice things like this.
Watching the graceful clouds fleeting elegantly past. <--"graceful" and "elegantly" pretty much convey the same message. Elegeant in any form doesn't really need to be there.
Clouds: transparent in their beautiful shades of ruby red and ochre, <--Since you're talking about the clouds at the end of the last line, you don't need to repeat it here. Also, "beautiful" just seems to add a bunch of syllables that don't really need to be there.
Passing gently on a summers breeze. <--This is okay but it may sound better as "Passing on a gentle summer's breeze."

The rest of it seems pretty good, except for the beginning of the third stanza.

Clouds like us move through this life,

When I first read this I thought Wait a minute, are we all clouds? But seriously, this line is confusing. Are you trying to compare us to the clouds? If so, you should rearrange the words and add puncuation, like maybe: Like clouds, we move through this life,

It sounds pretty, but I agree with Rei. It's missing something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

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for me there was just way too much description and not enough emotion. if you're just going to describe something (like clouds or the sky) then it's probably only going to be interesting if you use inventive language and metaphors and look at the something in a new way that most people don't think of. i just didn't feel there was enough originality, although the imagery itself was nice enough. try thinking of different ways to look at clouds (like that joni mitchell song, both sides now i think it's called....) and maybe taking out some of those adjectives.