A Gardeners Fall

[Bunx]

A Gardeners Fall

I spend the day
kneeling on grass.
Bruised knuckles bent back
skin tanned by dirt.

Something feels nice about it.
Going hours with a single thought,
spotting weeds that don't belong
before they grow, bind, and seed.

Cuts on my hand blend with scars
fading slowly I still recall.
Wounds caused by me, and others.
Trauma feels like a stone to shovel.

Picking rocks with my hands
then digging away the soil.
Sweat on sunned skin
cements change from then.

Then I think
it's not me I lament.

Sometimes it's takes cuts from thorns.
Planting flowers after digging up stones.
Trees knocking off your favorite hat.
Laughing in yards working with old friends.

Be open to letting shit degrade in soil.

[matsunosuperfan]

A Gardeners Fall

I spend the day
kneeling on grass.
Bruised knuckles make her wonder
why I'm covered in dirt.

Something feels nice about it.
Going hours with a single thought,
spotting weeds that don't belong
around flowers raised by thorns.

Cuts on my hand hide old scars
from memories camouflaged
in a past I wish I could celebrate.
Trauma feels like a stone to shovel.

Picking rocks with my hands
then digging away the soil.
Sweat on sunned skin
with knees on cement. 

Then I think
it's not me I lament.

Sometimes it's takes pruning a rose.
Planting new flowers after digging up stones.
Trees knocking off your favorite hat.
Laughing with an old friend.

Be open to letting pain degrade in soil,
hoping for the best next season.

Hi Bunx! Don't know that I've read from you before. Nice to see you around here. 

I like this poem best when the narrator is being plainspoken, which seems to suit them: "Something feels nice about it" is easily the most compelling line for me. Such a blunt declarative, with no affectation whatsoever. There's humility and real vulnerability there, which contrasts nicely with the rough, tactile imagery of S1. 

The first moment I really question is "around flowers raised by thorns." The syntax gets a little complex in a way that is potentially confusing (does "around" modify "spotting" or "don't belong"?), and "flowers raised by thorns" strikes me as kinda cheezy (sorry). 

This dangerously cheeze-adjacent tone continues into S3, which I would just cut. "Trauma feels like a stone to shovel" is an interesting metaphor, but personally, I am gonna take a lot of convincing to accept "trauma" being used in earnest in a poem. It's such a loaded word, and I think we're often best served by avoiding words that do too much speaking for themselves (unless the goal is to confront and subvert those inherited semantic expectations). 

I like "picking... digging away the soil." Good sound there, IMO, and it's just a very clean, specific image with a lot of potential resonance - it invites implicature. "Sweat on sunned skin with knees on cement" is annoying poemy language, and it seems like mostly a restatement of scenic information I've already been given (see: S1). 

The cement/lament rhyme also strikes me as too cute/more distracting than productive. 

The run from "rose..." to "laughing with an old friend" is interesting. I feel like I would like it to have more weight somehow. "Sometimes it takes" what takes these things? Maybe the speaker could be a bit less coy about their interior world here. 

Final couplet needs to go; don't summarize your intentions. 

Thanks for letting me read <3

[Bunx]

Hey MSF,
All good feedback with solid suggestions to think through. I've had writers block for awhile now, it's weird like trying to find your voice again. I have tried to write a poem similar to this like three times before deleting and I think this one is at least workable, and I've been wanting to try and contribute more.

I used to write a lot about my mental health experiences, in hopes it might help someone. Often I feel guilty of trying to wrap to specific of ideas in a small space it's hard to get the point across. I'll definitely give this one another pass

[wasellajam]

Hi, Bunx!!!xo This is a good read, some notes:

A Gardeners Fall

I spend the day
kneeling on grass.
Bruised knuckles make her wonder
why I'm covered in dirt.
While I like the sonics of kneeling/knuckles it brings some confusion, the move from knees to hands and why the bruised knuckles would make her wonder, seems to me the bruised knuckles would help her understand why the N is covered in dirt. Maybe some tweak here.

Something feels nice about it.
Going hours with a single thought,
spotting weeds that don't belong
around flowers raised by thorns.
Love this zeroing in on the real joy of gardening, makes me miss it.

Cuts on my hand hide old scars
from memories camouflaged
in a past I wish I could celebrate.
Trauma feels like a stone to shovel.
"Memories" could be replaced with something more specific. As is I think a comma after memories would help, the cuts are camouflaged? I like the trauma line.

Picking rocks with my hands
then digging away the soil.
Sweat on sunned skin
with knees on cement. 
Cement changed my image of the N working in a garden, maybe if it was moved up I would have better understood the kneeling but the knuckles being bruised.

Then I think
it's not me I lament.
Interesting lines, lamenting oneself.

Sometimes it's takes pruning a rose.
Planting new flowers after digging up stones.
Trees knocking off your favorite hat. My favorite line, says so much.
Laughing with an old friend.

Be open to letting pain degrade in soil,
hoping for the best next season.
Possibly:
Pain (or past lives or something ) degrades in soil
then something evoking spring, or the hopeful result of work done.

Thanks for posting, Bunx, worth working on. Thanks for the read!

[matsunosuperfan]

Seconding the "trees knocking off favorite hat" bit. Should have highlighted that earlier. A standout line. So often I think when we find a less common use for a good hard Anglican/Germanic verb, it really helps to carry what might otherwise come off precious. Great tone there. Aim for that.

[Bunx]

Went for another pass at the poem taking suggestions from both of you.

Ella- hopefully the changes make a more vivid picture of the garden hustle. In the original I was trying to get the illusion of a worker going from spot to spot, but that is hard to get across.
Also hope all is well in your world!

MSF- hopefully you find more to like with this edit. I feel like I do want to write a similar poem that is more abstract and doesn't spell out the themes. That could wait for another time though. Thanks for the feedback

[matsunosuperfan]

Went for another pass at the poem taking suggestions from both of you.

Ella- hopefully the changes make a more vivid picture of the garden hustle. In the original I was trying to get the illusion of a worker going from spot to spot, but that is hard to get across.
Also hope all is well in your world!

MSF- hopefully you find more to like with this edit. I feel like I do want to write a similar poem that is more abstract and doesn't spell out the themes. That could wait for another time though. Thanks for the feedback

Hey great reviz. More specific notes to follow. Good job (y)

[matsunosuperfan]

A Gardeners Fall

I spend the day kneeling on grass:
my bruised knuckles bent back,
the skin tanned by dirt.

Something feels nice about it.

Going hours with a single thought, spotting weeds
that don't belong
in the same bed as flowers. 

On my hands, a web of scars
camouflaged in history
I wish I could celebrate.

Trauma feels like a stone to shovel.

Picking rocks 
with my bare hands, I dig away
the soil, thinking it's not me

I'm sorry for.

Sometimes it's taking cuttings from a rose.
Planting flowers after digging up stones.
Laughing in yards, at work with old friends.
Trees knocking off your favorite hat.

The way it doesn't seem to mind
falling from such a height. 
--

By way of suggestion. Still can't make sense of "sometimes it's takes" so I just did what I thought you meant there; sorry if I am missing the idea. 

I think some more intentional lineation like this brings the poem off the page a bit, which is nice. Some of these lines deserve a bit of a highlight IMO. I get a really nice effect from "something feels nice about it" having blank space on either side. The humble declarative just floating in its own pool of contentment. 

Eliminating the annoying poemy syntax and just telling it straight with the pronouns in S1 significantly improves that stanza IMO (for me, it rescues it). 

Love what you've done with the trauma line. 

I took massive liberties with the ending just to kind of show concept. You can do something cool with the ending instead of something boring, you can open the poem up instead of closing it off like it's an after-school special where you have to tell us the Moral Of The Story <3 

Nice work.
--

ETA: feel really strongly about the changes to S1, don't know if you agree but I'll yap a bit anyway bc who doesn't love yapping? I think it shows how big a difference a little change in tone can make, and how much lineation can contribute to tone.

I mean personally, I see:

I spend the day
kneeling on grass.
Bruised knuckles bent back
skin tanned by dirt.

and get immediate distance between me and the speaker. I'm thrust into an obviously poemy world of language where poemy things are happening. I can choose to be down with that or not, but there's no room to even pretend I'm anywhere but in a room that knows it is a poem-room. Whereas:

I spend the day kneeling on grass:
my bruised knuckles bent back,
the skin tanned by dirt.

to me reads much more easily and naturally. I can choose to pretend the speaker is just being conversational, though of course there's clearly been more careful attention to language than all that. But there's no "0 chance anyone ever talks like this outside a poem" wall to scale anymore. And that puts me in a much more charitable mindset wrt the speaker and the immersive project of the poem.

[Bunx]

MSF- Happy with the changes I made, thanks for the feedback

[milo]

A Gardeners Fall

I spend the day
kneeling on grass.
Bruised knuckles bent back
skin tanned by dirt.

Something feels nice about it.
Going hours with a single thought,
spotting weeds that don't belong
around flowers I've come to know.

Cuts on my hand blend old scars
from a past-life, camouflaged
in history I wish I could celebrate.
Trauma feels like a stone to shovel.

Picking rocks with my hands
then digging away the soil.
Sweat on sunned skin
cements change from then.

Then I think
it's not me I lament.

Sometimes it's takes cuts from thorns.
Planting flowers after digging up stones.
Trees knocking off your favorite hat.
Laughing in yards working with old friends.

Be open to letting shit degrade in soil,
hoping for the best this fall.

I think overall - you have a pretty strong concept here.  I especially like the penultimate line and wonder if it wouldn't be stronger to end right there - it is such a nice close.

This part here:

Cuts on my hand blend old scars
from a past-life, camouflaged
in history I wish I could celebrate.

risks over-showing the author's hand - it feels overt rather than the simple exploration of the gardening, especially the "old scars" reference which is definitely cliche.  Also, I feel like more could maybe done with the weeds than just they don't belong around flowers - sure - but really, isnt that a stronger scaffold for your metaphor than old scars?

IDK - it is coming along nicely, thanks for posting

[Bunx]

Hey milo! You make really good points. I've tried writing similar poems to this one recently and I couldn't get past this thought.

"Why would anyone want to read about tossing weeds in a bucket?"

Though I do like the symbolism of like a "weeding out and letting go" metaphor. My hope for S2 and S3 was the reader might liken the scars to weeds being of often "camouflaged" in gardens. I did drop the "old" because it does feel redundant in the context of the stanza. I'll definitely think it over and see if I can make any solid changes.

Also ending the poem at the previous stanza is a solid idea. Thanks for the read and suggestions

[milo]

Hey milo! You make really good points. I've tried writing similar poems to this one recently and I couldn't get past this thought.

"Why would anyone want to read about tossing weeds in a bucket?"

Though I do like the symbolism of like a "weeding out and letting go" metaphor. My hope for S2 and S3 was the reader might liken the scars to weeds being of often "camouflaged" in gardens. I did drop the "old" because it does feel redundant in the context of the stanza. I'll definitely think it over and see if make any solid changes.

Also ending the poem at the previous stanza is a solid idea. Thanks for the read and suggestions

Let me correct this because I think this is important - not the previous stanza - the previous line. The second to last line is one of the best in the poem and, for me, sums it up perfectly - there is nothing need for anything to follow

[Bunx]

milo- Roger that! Glad you like that line

[Bunx]

milo- I tried my best to alter the poem slightly to reflect some changes. One being the last line and the other being S3.
I don't feel super confident about the changes but I feel it adds a little mystery to the poem.
Thanks again for the feedback