Die-Cut - edit

[RiverNotch]

Die-Cut


Life is made of puzzle pieces–This line makes me giggle profusely. Puzzle-piece is slang for autistic---controversial slang, bordering on slur, but I as a puzzle-piece myself don't mind. Also I admire the use of trochaic: it's not a form that's used much in English, I think.
some events, new thoughts about them,
memories of things that happened,
schemes and dreams that never did.

As each die-cut shape flips over,
future gray to brilliant present,
there’s a moment to consider
where to place it in the past.

Sometimes it’s a straight-edged border
or a corner setting limits;
mostly it will join a pile, once This line trips me. Because "once" is separated by a comma, it naturally reads to me stressed, regardless of if I adjust my reading to the meter, and I don't think this line justifies such standing out.
judged by color, image, kind.

Then, with many upward-facing,
understanding, meaning, slowly Too many -ings and commas here: the sense too easily gets lost. Maybe

Then with many upward-facing
understanding comes, if slowly,
specked too much with gaps, demanding
search among bits pushed aside.

forms but gaps remain, demanding
search among bits pushed aside.

Often missing pieces turn out
to be, not still face-down, waiting, One of the most famous lines in the English language insists that this begins iambic and, again, I don't see a reason why this line should so stand out. There shouldn't be a comma after "be", either.
but a person met, discarded,
for her color or his shape. Color and shape here suggest race, gender, levels of ability. If the comment is intentional, the poem either doesn't built to it at all---before it's just "events", "thoughts", "memories", "schemes", "dreams"---or it makes "puzzle pieces" especially funny/wrong.

In the end, some puzzle-solvers
know beforehand what their final
panorama will portray: they
saw the box-top, read the Book. The allusion to Holy Scripture here (which Holy Scripture is of course left to the reader to decide, as the piece doesn't lean towards any religion) kinda makes my eyes roll, largely because it sets up too 'clean' an ending I think.

Others will delay that closing
recognition of the picture
they’ve assembled, but it finds them
for no life ends incomplete. At least this final stanza leans back out of religion again, but it feels....wrong. Like the sort of ending you come up with to end a piece, but you know it isn't strictly true. Because if "no life ends incomplete", then tragic losses wouldn't be so tragic, would they? Death would not be something for which we have to continually assert, "Death, where is thy sting?"

I think there may be an idea trying to get out here, but this version seems clunky and unsatisfactory.  Advice would be appreciated.