Pulling Roots

[milo]

"Pulling Roots"

I plowed and played in my home by the oaks;
how loved I was by the town and its folks.
I rooted my feet in the clay that made me,
and laid in the grass with leaves to shade me.

Tall I grew, like the dreams I nourished;
soon made plans which helped them to flourish.
Watching planes painting tails in the blue-lit sky,
soon I was waving my oaks goodbye.

I traveled the world, made my name known,
though my seeds were watered with care at home.
Fame came fast, like a summer storm,
but the me inside said "goodbye" with scorn.

Years passed by like a lonely moon;
I sat with fortune in a darkened room.
Cars and crowds made pavement sounds;
no trees for the dying in a brick-laid town.

Now I am old and the world has forgot
the splash I made when the flame was hot.
The oaks have fallen to the corporate axe.
You can never go home once you've turned your back.

First, I would suggest eliminating all of the inversions - these are statements where you have placed the words backwards for some reason. Examples are :

"how loved I was"
"Tall I grew"

next, try not to confuse lie with lay

end rhymes should be consistent or not at all. me-me isn't rhyme it is something we call identity.

try to avoid abstraction as much as you can. Especially avoid having your narrator interact with abstraction, fill buckets with your abstraction, etc.

see if there isn't some concrete way for your narrator to refer to their dreams without using the word "dreams"


prepositional phrases used as modifiers read awkwardly in poetry. an example is said "goodbye" with scorn.

Thanks for posting. There are things we could do with the meter, as well, but I would say focus on these things first.