Long Terraced Poems

Long Terraced Poems. Below are the most popular long Terraced by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Terraced poems by poem length and keyword.


You Are A Masterpiece

You are a masterpiece; true work of art

And your whole being, and its every part

Is masterwork of nature and mankind

Which in you is accomplished and refined.


Your hair, like hanging gardens of the queen

Of Babylon, swing down, and in them seen

Are ivy, cherry blossom, orchid, rose

Blooming together in resplendor. Those


Blue eyes, in which we see Monet, Renoir -

The beauty fathomed specially from afar,

That are more haunting, beautiful and true

The greater distance between me and you;


A nose that like a yacht upon the seas

Engulfs the essence of the ocean breeze -

That stays aloft in turmoil and in flood

And sends the chastened air through the blood -


The lips that like the opening to a cave

Conceal a warm and delicate enclave

In which the sparkling teeth and gentle tongue

Lead food inside and air into the lung;


A neck that like a Doric column stands

Majestic, long and white; the lily hands

That craft calligraphy and highest art

Sustained by rushing turbines of your heart;


A chest with pair of Taj Mahals adorned

That puts all human craftsmanship to scorn;

The voice, like a piano or a flute

Resounds through many octaves or stops mute,


The strands of spirit that are entertwined

In the refining furnace of your mind

That fills itself with majesty and love

And forges them into a treasure trove:


The legs like those of cheetah or gazelle

Are elegant and long and run like hell;

The stomach that like delta river's sand

Is smooth and soft and tender to the hand;


And terraced hills and paddies of your ears,

And morning dewdrops of your gentle tears,

And the Saharah Desert of your back,

And the Forbidden Palace in its track:


In you the world is manifest, in you

Is sun and sky and every worldly hue,

The flowers, stars and sculptures and the word

Of masters and the dreamers and the Lord.


I love you all; and, feeling with my heart

Your whole entity and every part,

I rise in passion and, inspired, fall

Into the Sistine Chapel of your soul.


MOTHERS DAY CARD

Poetry Soup Premiere Contest winner
MOTHER'S DAY poetry contest sponsored by Benjamin Bartley, April 2025

Morning starts early, before it gets light
Opening cupboards, to see what’s in store
Teachable moments, with wrong versus right
Hope grabs the car keys, then heads through the door
Early bird children, are making their way
Ready to take on, another school week
So many hurdles, to climb day-by-day
Destiny journeys, down these terraced streets 
Another story, of work’s imbalance
Young hungry children, get so tall, so fast
Confidence takes it's fences and chances 
Armed with new shoes but, how long will they last?
Roses or chocolates, say life can be hard
Demanding much more, than words on a card.
Form: Sonnet

Derailed

Cups on their hooks rattle
the train rumbles through the town
icebergs crack and fall off the roof,
they crash through two stories of chilled air.

Dad heaves himself off the sofa,
empty plate in hand.
Mother has a new electric carving knife,
the turkey is in meaty ribbons already.

The train is still rolling,
its high-pitched horn
blasting through wallpaper.

We are all a little upset,
for our little terraced home in England
has time-slipped into rural Ohio,
and the only person still alive
sits on a rocking chair
in a post turkey stupor.

Thoughts plow through a turgid brain.
He begins to imagine
that all his poems have been derailed
in a train crash
somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
The incongruity if this vision
does not strike him as at all odd.

Intuitively he understands,
that If the Cloud bursts now,
he will never be existential.

The idea is almost appealing.

Glimpses of Childhood Memories

Some Glimpses of childhood Memories

The town where I grew up seems much the same 
Its many features yet retained
Still central fountain that caresses the sky
Its hazy droplets against the winter dregs of sun
Gone, the regiment of poplars that shaded the green
Gone their sinewy boughs that claimed the bright
And at the head a red bricked hall 
That governs and oversees it all
New Morrisons nestles to one side
A steady human trickle to color its doors
I lived at Campers Road where terraced housing still exists
A council house domain when in its prime
I poked sticks in pavement tar with fascination
And wondered about its composition
The chalked insult scrawled upon the path 
Removed by soapy water enforced by parent
Written because she rode her bike across our yard
Its final remnants ‘Mrs Knot is a snot’ now fully gone
The same old store stands across the narrow
Where handy for forgotten items to obtain
But gone the candy shop beside
And in its place a show of artefacts to see and buy
No more the jar line up of colored sweets
To tempt wide eyed children into its confines
Across the road a spinney existed 
Where entangled undergrowth harbored climbing trees
And in the center the finest enchanted tree
Spread its woody arms in welcoming pose
Sap glistened from its spiral hollows
While light between the parted clouds alighted on its verdant leaves
Now further to brave a walk beyond the hump backed bridge
Where swings abound in a field
And I could see above the clouds
And flee to other worlds afar.
And dream of what was to become
Across the town exists the pits
Where flooded lakes mask dug out holes
And there to while the day by azure blue
To watch the ripples embrace the skeletal crane
Corroded wreck that bore the deluge

Premium Member Colors of My Day

Deep golden choirs ringing out
their scarlet anthems with a shout;
blood orange whispers echo
as the violet innuendo 
scatters all about.

The dusky pink clouds fade to grey,
the gulls, the sun, soon fly away;
this sunset's lacking just one thing -
your voice to help me sing 
the colors of my day.

   The evergreens are violins -
   crescendos of December winds 
     conduct the hills.
   With rhapsodies of terraced hue
   the sky resolves to royal blue, 
     but where are you?

The rainbow arches high above
and in it I see cascades of
your multi-colored resonance
I reach... and feel the presence 
of your ardent love.

Absorbing this, I realize
through many shades of changing skies
that you cannot be tied to one,
for your love is the sun
by whose light I see with iridescent eyes.
© John Watt  Create an image from this poem.
Form: Lyric


Blue Collar, White Collar

Blue collar school,
Blue collar play,
Blue collar children,
Blue collar praise,
Blue collar words,
Blue collar phrased,
Blue collar work,
Blue collar pay,
Blue collar union,
Blue collar say,
Blue collar terraced,
Blue collar glazed,
Blue collar town,
Blue collar ways,
Blue collar nights,
Blue collar days,
Blue collar skies,
Blue collar greys.


White collar night school,
White collar college days,
White collar degree,
White collar knowledge pays,
White collar nine-to-five,
White collar maze,
White collar union,
White collar raise,
White collar semi,
White collar double glazed,
White collar mowed lawn,
White collar baize,
White collar supper time,
White collar bordelaise,
White collar children,
White collar praise,
While collar world,
White collar haze.

Blue Collar, White Collar,
Whatever we might say,
We can’t forget those Blue collar days,
We can’t change all our Blue collar ways.
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member GRANDPAS PATH

Our cabin in North Carolina was built by Deborah’s mom and dad in 1983…
It rests on the side of a mountain…nestled in among the trees.

When Deborah’s dad was alive he had a garden terraced off at the bottom of the yard.
He built a pathway to this garden…to make the walk down there…not quite as hard.

This was no easy task…you have to understand…
as he molded each square out of cement…and placed them in the ground by hand.

When our family would visit in the summer time…
our children would run up and down his steps with smiles and wide eyes..
to pick vegetables and blackberries from his garden…play in the woods
or in the evening to chase fireflies….

Our grandchildren used his steps to take them to a fort we made when they were small
Our dog Whitman used his steps chasing countless tennis balls.

When Grandpa was alive he kept his steps in perfect condition…
clean with no weeds around them,…
because he knew when we would visit…our children would be running up and down them.

But Grandpa is no longer with us and our children and grandchildren have grown…
which means Grandpa’s path…once used to play on and explore…
those 41 steps that led to countless adventures…aren’t used as often anymore.

As children grow their interests change and their desires to play in the yard wane…
now on Grandpa’s path…up and down those steps…only memories remain…

But that doesn’t stop me every summer…once we arrive…
from taking a hoe a sickle and a little brush too..
and cleaning off each step on the path…just like Grandpa used to do.

It is a labor of love…making sure Grandpa’s path is as perfect as it used to be…
because on the one hand I know somewhere…Grandpa’s smiling down on me…

But I also have an ulterior motive…each year I’m on my own crusade
to make that path exactly the way it was when our children’s memories were made.

So if you happen to visit us in the summer at the cabin…
and you see an old main in the yard with a hoe, a sickle and a little brush too
Don’t be alarmed…he’s just getting an old path ready for summer…
just like Grandpa use to do.
© Jim Yerman  Create an image from this poem.
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member Thanksgiving Visitors Come From Away

Thanksgiving Visitors Come From Away

Hands once separated
 By history on shores of distant oceans
Entwined again on a blustery November morning,
Meeting beneath a song
 In the shadow of a steeple thrust
Into a brilliant autumn sky,
Uniting visitors from across the pond -
Traveling like new world explorers 
Canyons grand, rocky mountain majesty
Rocks of pilgrims, terraced vineyards 
And a golden gate - 
With a stranger sharing common legacy of the days long past
Welcomed to a home in friendship
Knowing though a cozy shelter place awaits,
As Thanksgiving rushes toward the city by the bay,
On this harvest celebration
A family waiting beside a warming fire
And a groaning board of roasted turkey, pumpkin pie,
Sweet tart cranberries and potatoes mashed together
Unavailable as chefs and innkeepers share the holiday
With sons and daughters, brothers, sisters
 And other fathers, mothers;
No chair reserved for strangers 
From another land at the table
Until a hand extends an invitation
To share the festival of bounty
With unknown hearts at a table,
Always ready to set another place,
Awaiting laughter wrapped in a tradition
Of jokes and stories, 
The savory scents of a new song sung
By hearts reunited –
Bowing heads to the words
  Of a harvest grace
Gathering hands separated 
By more than wider oceans
Hearts forever linked in memory
By a blustery November holiday.

Date Written: 11/13/19
Contest Entered:  Strand Choice 6
Date Judged: 1/26/20

Two Worlds

Laboured breaths
with each strenuous uphill step,
taking in the ancient spirits
from an ancient world
when the earth was venerated.
Every stride taken prompts visions of 
the Chaquis who journied this
rigorous passage.
In an empire of siwi, corn and orchids,
rock etched with lichen, sweltering heat and winds that bite;
a worn path of rugged stone and steps
rises then falls through the damp cloud forest
on Pachamama's curves
leading to primordial sacred sites.
Tasting the victory of reaching
that final destination evokes
emotions of gratitude, while honouring 
a vanished civilization and those who perished
defending their ancesteral province.
Amid the ghostly essence of the terraced terrain
a lone condor circles above-

An elegy for innocence

Historically the books are written by a well-known writer 

The characters are formed to choose the sense of flight or fighter 

The library of the mind stows away the facts from the fiction 

The sequence of events unfold, memorised with restriction 

 

The nature of the story, can cause the mind to cry 

The loss of peaceful innocence in those days gone by   

 

The imagery of barricades in a crowded stark front room 

Foreboding silence and tension create a sense of doom 

In the old terraced house, there’s a closure of ranks  

As the fighter steps forward and the other flanks 

 

The pushing and shoving in the silent stark room 

The circle decreases and a flash warps the plume 

The memories jagged as they cut like a knife 

As she’s hit by the boxer and fights for her life    

 

The dry autumnal street carpets red and gold 

The crunch of the leaves cushioned the blow 

The flash of the memory vivid and sharp 

Innocence held with such disregard 

 

The nature of the story, can cause the mind to cry  

The loss of peaceful innocence in those days gone by
Form: Rhyme

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