Shyness (Photo credit: roeyahram)
I admit that it’s true
That with nearness of you
My cheeks seem to show
A far pinker hue
And it seems we see here
My more brittle veneer
Comes with moments when you
Have ventured more near
But let’s not presume
That balance resumes
Just at the moment
You exit the room
Let’s not cause a sensation
Remember our education
And that mere correlation
Cannot prove there’s causation.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
helenvalentina 
this post almost makes me blush… hehe
LOL, thank you! The irony being that the poem was inspired by something very prosaic – a comment made that in my workplace we need to get a training course for analytical skills because some people don’t seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation…so inspiration comes from the strangest of places sometimes!! 🙂
Loved it! The inspirational source, the poem itself, and the underlying humor and playfulness of the poem! Not to mention the rhyme scheme which has me combing through books looking for aaba with the last quatrain’s end words all rhyming. It works so well in this poem, but I am at a loss to identify it, so I presume you made this “form” up? There must be some correlation, right? 🙂
Yes, I made the form up as I wrote it, which is not to say it isn’t some classic form for all I know, but I didn’t do it deliberately if it is!! 🙂 The whole thing just came to me rather like a song lyric, so perhaps that’s the underlying form inspiration. Perhaps that’s the correlation…or would that be causation..oh! I’m confusing myself!! LOL 🙂
i like the rhythm aswell 🙂
Thanks so much!! 🙂
this was my fave poem so far
Thank you so much – enjoyed writing it, it was fun. 🙂
enjoyed reading it, it was more fun
Fantastic piece of work lady,,,,,,This is so smart and witty poetry…Wheneva u r free enough, cud u in own own words tell me what causation is…
Thank you! Causation is when one thing causes another thing (like touching a flame cuases you to get burnt), whereas correlation is when one or more things seem to occur together. Sometimes people think the occurrence of things together means one causes the other/s…so people get correlation and causation confused…mind you, I don’t blame them, it is confusing at times. The poem was meant to be about someone with a crush so the cause was the object of her affections but she didn’t want to admit it so she was saying ‘don’t think your proximity caused me to act this way’. 🙂
Wowwwwww..thank u tonssssssssss for enlightening me on this..am so impressedddddddddddddd…way 2 go lady!
Your lines do intrigue me, and I quote:
“But let’s not presume
That balance resumes
Just at the moment
You exit the room.”
What is it that makes us believe that we contribute towards either stabilising or destabilising a situation? Is this our vanity rearing its head? What could we do to shift the perspective here?
Shakti
Thank you! Great question! It’s hard to get past our sense of ourselves as the centre of things I suppose, because all our experience of the world is via our perceptions of it and interactions with it…a real challenge for the ego as you say!!! 🙂
The like button seems to fail me today. But like ii did. Words, form and feeling.
Thanks so much Paul!! 🙂
Lovely
Thanks Eric, much appreciated!! 🙂
Would love to “like” this one a hundred times.
Thank you, so kind! It is one of my favourite ones I have to admit, one of the most fun to write. 🙂