Everything is still here

[geoff]

Hello tomoffing,


Here are some light thoughts to ponder:

Everything is still here

as I exhale, unfurling worries
as wisps of silk that purl
and shimmer in puddled moonlight,
each breathed into hindsight
by the first stars I ever saw. ...punctuation is a bit off in the stanza; there is no complete thought. I like the images, but am not entirely sure what I am supposed to take from the last two lines the more I pick at them--the stars are given the agency of the action (the "breathing", but I'm not convinced they should as of now

A frozen one third acre of silence
amplifies echoes of innocence...for a stanza that does a good job of stirring up images, the "echoes of innocence" feels hard to grasp fully
that rustle in the briars
and sloe bushes, as I did
when still small enough
to evade their barbs.

Tumbling from ivy clad banks
I'd lop the heads of daffodils
we planted one October.
Planting patience you called it;
Digging the past
to bury the future.

Youthful unkempt clouds of daisies
blanket the deep sleeping bulbs
and I recall scepticism
of a promised blossoming;
I know better now
as you did then.

A salt and sugar crust
coats the stone garden shed
where I served out my sentences
among pitch forks and pick axes;
Discipline and consequence
cemented within its walls.

The old stooped chestnut stands stoic
flecked with strands of snow.
He's outgrown my treehouse
and stopped dropping conkers
since I stopped stringing them.
"...needs felling..." you noted recently.

I won't hear of it, the sapling can wait. ...liked this line. Ties the past with the present.

The dull beat of unseen swans
arrowing across Farnhnam field
and plashing the inky floodwater
drums the reflection of a forgotten question
of departures and transience.

"Where do they go Dad?"
"You'll follow to find out in your own time."

Roused by the door handle's cold click
and warm escaping clinks,
I turn on the threshold
pausing to inhale,
absorbing stillness.
Everything is still here.

Lots of images here that feel well-crafted. However, the stanzas often strike me as being more independent from each other than I would prefer. They often introduce a new element of this natural setting, rather than relying on what preceded them. The result is an effect that keeps me going from "exhibit to exhibit" in a way. Things that I expect to get more detail don't (e.g., the "sentences" served out in the shed). There are many elements that could be poems in and of themselves, but I felt as though they got brushed over.

Thanks for the read
-geoff