Maceration [revision 1]

[syntheticsunset]

True and Milo, thanks so much to both of you for the encouraging feedback!

The metaphoric flood is a bit ambiguous and difficult for me to get to the bottom of. I feel that I can dive deep enough to find something, but the floor is a bit murky, and although this might be hypocritical of me, for some reason I want a concrete bottom. I'm not sure if it's meant to represent mourning, or if it's meant to be literal, and surreal, or not.

I think you are on to something. I was trying to squeeze a bit from both worlds, the literal and the surreal. I'll try to make the murk a bit clearer

There are a couple places where your word choices are working against you "clung on" "awoke"

Milo, do you mean that the diction has a negative impact on the meter in these spots?

you frequently choose passive voice when active would be so much stronger (meals were spiced with instead of tang of rotting timber spiced our . . .)

Good crit! I'll work to weed out those weak spots.

you seem to appreciate a good line (until evening throbbed with frogsong).

Glad to get an up vote on that line – I'm rather fond of it.

If anything I would pay attention to where the rhythm seems a little clunky, although I know this is not metric vers, it is still nice to use some metric techniques to control the flow.

That makes sense to me. I'll work on shoring up the meter where it isn't working well. Do you have any more specific advice about using meter to control the flow?