Tarras

It is winter, early morning in the little township, chilled and blackfrosted, the plants and bushes stiffly frozen, the football field icy, the trees carrying crystals of sharp ice up to the wet sodden air-hugging mist.

Listen.  It is morning quietly roving the main road, the moist melodic streaming mist rising over the garage and the schoolhouse.  It is grass shivering on the hill.  Sunrise, dawn, the chorus of birds in the pinetrees.

It is Sunday morning. The thin clear slants of sun echo back onto the thick mist.  In the silver windowed house, the parents sleep heavy while three blanketed children toss and turn. In the workshop of the garage, Joe is up and in his practical oil-stained overalls is working on that ute that the farmer needs today.  Back in the house, the children now sit heavy-eyed around the wooden rectangular table.

And the toast burns as the jug boils. – Event ( breaking the rules)

“Hurry up kids, we’ll be late,” Mum shouts, sharp tongued.  Washed and combed and brushed, families drive the short way to the little church on the hill.  Past the swamp where the dragonflies shimmer and hover in the morning sunlight.  Where the captured tadpoles would have grown into glazed green slippery little frogs.

Look. On the hill behind the house the pinetrees lift their heavy branches of sharp dense needles into the dwindling disappearing time-now-over mist.  Down below in the township, the little general store opens its ready-for-anything doors to sell soap to biscuits, flour, tea towels, light bulbs and milk that will arrive later in the day carried for hours on the bus.

And soon you will be sitting on hard straight-backed wooden pews with no cushions.  The tiny white wooden church echoing with the sound of morning hymns, streaming out into the frosty but now sunstreaked morning.

This piece of writing is an evocative description of one moment in time. Your task today is to create a piece of writing that describes an instant in a place you know, borrowing the following features from Dylan Thomas’ writing:

• It must be in the Second Person Viewpoint
• It must appeal to a range of the senses (Pay particular attention to the sections that start with the imperatives: “Listen”, or “Look”)
• It must use some from the following list of figurative language:
  • Alliteration
  • Metaphor
  • Simile
  • Personification
  • Repetition
  • Listing
  • Statement
  • Simple sentence
  • Time
  • Command – verb beginning

Structure- Tarras
P1, Season, time, place
P2, Command, imperative voice
P3, Time, weather, Buildings
P4, event (sentence)
P5, dialogue
P6, Command
P7, 2nd person, You

Practice:
The classroom:
A dense silence clogs the room, through the blind peaks a thin beam of light. The distant cheer of children echoes down along the frosted walls.

Arriving at school:
A raw chill cloaks the chattering car, waiting for the clock to re-wind. The blanket begins to melt.