Terse Verse Tuesday
title: These Hands Can Build Bridges
characters: Draco, Harry
rating: G
words: 154
summary: The alliances of Draco's past mean less, now. New ones must be built, and he has his eyes set on one in particular.
Consider the best conduit of promise belonging to an ape:
The hands, doubtless. Fingers branched out to do conclusively more
Than just grab. Sticks with which we can promise pain and death
Made and wielded so easy. Swish and flick!
These hands can build bridges, but Draco has built walls for so long
He can hardly recall the assemblages adequate for aqueduct construction
But with the old ones dried up and crumbled like Hogwarts, he's homesick
For one bridge that might have been.
Consider the distance of these continents so far drifted:
Evolution, one must assume, configured such vast differences
Yet once, hands that held little more than branches, learned
To build shelters better than nature's.
Draco confides this shred of confidence in the bricks,
His old congestions naturally selected out, and he places bits
Of Hogwarts back together, to be big again, knowing full well Potter
Would be watching from a distance.
commentary
This poem was finished long before I started TVT. I have always loved it, yet I kept thinking, I can do better. Now that I do feel like I've posted technically better poems than this, it's time to put this one out there. Personally, I am enormously fascinated with human evolution (and evolution in general), so it was fun to use it so heavily in a H/D poem.
Regarding Draco here. In the past, Draco would have only made alliances with people like him, Slytherins and purebloods, but in a post-war world these kind of alliances mean less. An alliance with a war hero, however, could help his own image. This could be the beginning of Draco treating Harry differently, maybe not sychophantly, but with less vitriol. He helps rebuild Hogwarts because he knows Harry will see him doing it.
That said (this is just my opinion post-poem), Draco won't truly win Harry over unless he's doing it for reasons deeper than brownie points. Harry, to me, is always good at spotting the difference between actions with real convictions behind them, and actions with angles.
BONUS POEM. ravenna_c_tan had a little poetry challenge the other day, to write about magic and/or love. Winner would get a book, but I realized later that it was only open until midnight and I was too late. I posted it regardless and she said she'd probably send me an e-book anyway. <3 I'm quite pleased with myself for completing an acrostic poem I'm proud of, short as it may be.
Miles spill out in front of me. They spell out
A drawling landscape of "what if". But isn't it
Graduated animal impulse, this needy alliance: Love?
Isn't it just the slurred edge of an instinct. Or is it
Conjured possibility. Human idiosyncrasy. Magic maybe.
<3
characters: Draco, Harry
rating: G
words: 154
summary: The alliances of Draco's past mean less, now. New ones must be built, and he has his eyes set on one in particular.
Consider the best conduit of promise belonging to an ape:
The hands, doubtless. Fingers branched out to do conclusively more
Than just grab. Sticks with which we can promise pain and death
Made and wielded so easy. Swish and flick!
These hands can build bridges, but Draco has built walls for so long
He can hardly recall the assemblages adequate for aqueduct construction
But with the old ones dried up and crumbled like Hogwarts, he's homesick
For one bridge that might have been.
Consider the distance of these continents so far drifted:
Evolution, one must assume, configured such vast differences
Yet once, hands that held little more than branches, learned
To build shelters better than nature's.
Draco confides this shred of confidence in the bricks,
His old congestions naturally selected out, and he places bits
Of Hogwarts back together, to be big again, knowing full well Potter
Would be watching from a distance.
commentary
This poem was finished long before I started TVT. I have always loved it, yet I kept thinking, I can do better. Now that I do feel like I've posted technically better poems than this, it's time to put this one out there. Personally, I am enormously fascinated with human evolution (and evolution in general), so it was fun to use it so heavily in a H/D poem.
Regarding Draco here. In the past, Draco would have only made alliances with people like him, Slytherins and purebloods, but in a post-war world these kind of alliances mean less. An alliance with a war hero, however, could help his own image. This could be the beginning of Draco treating Harry differently, maybe not sychophantly, but with less vitriol. He helps rebuild Hogwarts because he knows Harry will see him doing it.
That said (this is just my opinion post-poem), Draco won't truly win Harry over unless he's doing it for reasons deeper than brownie points. Harry, to me, is always good at spotting the difference between actions with real convictions behind them, and actions with angles.
BONUS POEM. ravenna_c_tan had a little poetry challenge the other day, to write about magic and/or love. Winner would get a book, but I realized later that it was only open until midnight and I was too late. I posted it regardless and she said she'd probably send me an e-book anyway. <3 I'm quite pleased with myself for completing an acrostic poem I'm proud of, short as it may be.
Miles spill out in front of me. They spell out
A drawling landscape of "what if". But isn't it
Graduated animal impulse, this needy alliance: Love?
Isn't it just the slurred edge of an instinct. Or is it
Conjured possibility. Human idiosyncrasy. Magic maybe.
<3