Green, Green, Gone

[cidermaid]

Hi Kieth, There are very few of your poems that i cannot connect with or see a clear and compelling picture...i think this is why I like your writing so much. (Clever and arty farty is all well and good but is well above my pay level most of the time!). I like your poems because they are earthed in subjects I can identify with.

I'm struggling to get my head back into the concept of critting so just a couple of comments. Overall i think this one works well.

Strange enough that it had grown Not sure about the enough in this line..it is okay but I was then expecting a counter point to this word to justify its use. (We had a tree just like this in our village churchyard wall that hung over the road on the way to school. Road = no swing though but the roots took out the lower wall and made a sort of cave instead great on winter night walks home to hide in)
on the side of a sandstone slab.
A huge knarred hand reaching out
to touch another world,
held by an underground prison.
I thought of it as old,
generations had played at its wrist,
swung from its finger tips.

The rope had been robbed
from a coal mine,
It gave out black blisters
and was hung by a rumour. love all the details in this stanza. It beds the childs voice / perspective.

The pendulum effect was magnificent,
motion sickness spun from the canopy
to the creak of a rolling Galleon.
Roots drank the blood of virgins Stumbled here. Think this errs to the side of cliche. Suggestion : sucked dry the dirty virgins...
that sat and looked at dirty books, ...then need a change here to ..?..risque books
before they chanced the rope
and felt the kiss of bark.

They chopped off its hand
with no one to hold it,
broke up the slab,
sealed the wound with tar,
built houses over the prison. Nicely done to capture the moment and the wound to childhood. Not conviced about prision might have liked tomb.

I visited and spoke through the glass,
we wept for our loss.

Keep writing I always enjoy reading them
AJ