Marsh Prayer - Third Edit

[milo]

Marsh Prayer

Why not?
The reeds have fallen half in love with the ocean,
half in love with the green and mudded flats.
The grasses lean into the wind that holds them,
Then push back towards the salted sand.

The first line needs to go. After that you have four lines of flat description. Readers tend to get bored quickly (especially poetry readers) so four lines of description is a little much. A general rule of thumb is not to describe in poetry, that is for prose. You may want to set this up as a conditional statement instead, switching it up from describing to presenting. Example:

When reeds have fallen half in love with the ocean,
or with the green and mudded flats
and the grasses lean into the wind that holds them,
Then push back towards the salted sand.

you see how this is now presenting instead of describing? Of course it enlightens us to the second problem - then what? Still, dealing with that is your concern.

This marsh untended, the dark too deep to pierce -
All things outside the body are encumbrances.
The lily’s mouth slides open, its knuckles drag
against the silted earth. The gulls fall silent,
the heron lifts his leg then stops mid-air.

The moon hovers over the soggy earth.
God is dressed as a women tonight, and
sits alone sipping expensive dram.
We, with heavy, clayed feet hum
Our warm wet breath into the Holy Mount.

The problem of description is continued throughout the rest of the poem.

As Pound puts it:

"When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet mantle clad" he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents"

Thanks for posting, good luck.