a lovely gentle write, makes me feel a little homesick for my childhood view - lol though not mountains though - what are they? just because of the peaceful feeling that it brought me.... and my mind wandered to the sights i appreciate

firstly just a little about the rhythm - lol surprise, surprise

'coast to coast and the deep south' - 'and the' pulls the rhythm up... what about 'and through' - the word takes longer to say - has a heavier stress that is needed there
'coast to coast and through deep south'
does this make a difference to your ear, or is it just me?

also for rhythm
'where highest ridges appear blue' to my ear is missing a syllable - needs to be made anapaest or iambic
eg
'where highest ridges appear red-blue '
or
'with highest ridges painted blue '

another tiny picky - but only for workshop purpose/ interest, i'm truly not downing your enterprise/initiative with the unorthodox line...
but did you see my note on the workshop re one interpretation of true rhyme?
'A rhyme is not classified as a rhyme if one of the words being rhymed is the entirety of the other word (for example, ball and all).'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming#Perfect_rhymes

i wonder if your 'roamin' and 'home in' - to my ear the emphasis is on both 'home' and 'in' - would be disqualified by the orthodox rhymers
also
if using two syllables - 'roam-in' / 'home-in', then you are using the same consonant ( 'm' ) therefore it's not 'perfect' rhyme....

lol - just taking it to the limit....
then again - you could use 'roving'
love judy
xxx

It almost seems as though I've read this on a home or office plaque. Sweet and simple. Perfect.
Tommi

I make the mistake sometime of oversimplifying my explanations (Jess yells at me for talking too much) and in doing so I will denote the "preceding" consonantal sound before our like vowel/consonant sound as a consonant itself.
In all rhyme (excluding some of the really esoteric monsters that are used more as puzzle work or toys) it is the "sound" that we focus on. This is why "identicals" can work as a tool of irony, giving multiple meanings to the exact same sound due to its spelling.

Rhyme is Sound.

Describing a "proper" rhyme, we require an unlike consonant "sound" to come before our like sounding vowels and consonants. Often to describe this we must use the word consonant. This is semantics which I feel is critically important and you're not changing my mind on that. We must communicate and I want handy words to do it with.
But the bottom line is sound.
Stan, I mentioned this before, so I still don't get where you think your rhymes are so unorthodox as to start a debate. They are terminally imaginative, but not "anywhere near left field".

And Judy, the mountains he has chosen to remain in are Blue Ridged and I think red won't work, but I tend to agree with your meter suggestions otherwise.
However, his assignment was rhyme and that was well done.
Keep picking on him about the meter thing. He and I have been flying this kite for a while.
wesley

when you can get away with writing a Masters Thesis on the relationships between film and poetry in 5000 words and passing with Honors, then you can complain about me yelling at you for talking too much.

I believe in using the minimum words to say what is necessary.

Which brings me to Stan's poem. It does that nicely. And with nice rhyme, though I would hardly say unorthodox, allowing for colloquialism.

Judy's comments on meter were spot on.