"Silent Gift"

[billy]

hi bob, in general it's to hard to follow. and feels a lot like prose in places. the 1st stanza is too ambiguous and stops the reader from continuing, the 2nd stanza was much better. and then it become prosey

Midnight clanged
when her spiraling silhouette anchored down.
Tethered to indomitable irons
your mother's choice to kill herself,
left your world to me.

We summered in Kingston that year. My conscience boomed,
and I imagined death simpler than this. All the superlative magic
of white flowers, and pumped up promises, smashed:
Now, motherless you'd grow,
as seven stars thrummed above your bassinet. this stanza works, there's some enjambment, some imagery, the reader can understand what's being read.

They said you'd never talk. I heard them say no need for the second part of the phrase. pick one phrase or the other but not both [who said?]
"your daughter's deformed, and permanently mute."
Crib-side that evening I held you,
until the mewling hours
sifted truth through my ears.

By your fourth year, you pantomimed gestures with grimaces
and limbs awkward to me. Together we watched the apple trees
spangled with their gems. On days when you did try to speak
vowels swarmed in your throat, and stirred like sour paste.
I hurried to decipher every utterance.

I learned to listen. Silence uncoiled a revelation in me.
Today, my daughter Carolyn. I visit the apple trees
windfall sweeps the morning like a departing ghost,
and time has carved me whole -
There was new fruit after this.