The Voyeur and the Harpy

[milo]

you ask to see all of me

I am teetering on this line. On the one hand it is prosaic, but it is doing a lot of heavy lifting in establishing the addressee and the narrator. Still, do Voyeur's 'ask'? I think there would be a way to almost give a double meaning of sexy or lewd here.

perhaps you imagine yourself as the breeze
whose fingers will stir colour from the brooding lake
and paint it into clouds

I don't think you need 'perhaps' or "as" or "will". brooding lake is exactly the type of construct I would normally call out as contrived but it works nicely here. Of course you want 'fingers' for finger-painting but I prefer the image and sonics of 'finger'. Just a personal preference.

silent in the silt there are
rusted, twisted skeletons of shopping trolleys,
half a Datsun, someone’s dream of bliss in a wrought-iron bedhead
and I, who will need more than the six seeds you offer
to slough this season’s skin

I see why you want rusted and twisted but the overmodification always detracts for me. "dream of bliss" isn't working for me but the rest is fine. I would reconsider the break on "are" but after considering it around 30 different ways I can't come up with the suggestion.

This stanza includes our clues to the narrator. After reading several times it is clearly not Demeter. The season is winter (of a sort), that much is apparent and our narrator is someone who transforms in spring.

breezes do not reach the pipes that breathe
excreta into algal blooms, red as the storm that rends
mother from child

so the references to pollution become too strong to ignore here. what is a red storm that tears a mother from a child? I don't know yet, I have considered fire but rejected it.

you ask, but you
have no desire to discover
that here is no fire to purify,
only eternal decay
and someone else’s idea
of how to shape a life

my feeling now is that we are the voyeur - watching, waiting for beauty to unfold as the seasons, demanding it, but unwilling to do anything to prevent pollution from overwhelming it. My knowledge of harpies is limited - mostly to their food stealing prowess and their confusion later with the more crone-like characteristics of Nordic mythos. I think your last 2 lines are the weakest in the poem. I would like to see 2 strong lines here really bring it to a close or these 2 snipped but that is just me.

Overall, I love it even if I am totally wrong on all counts. It has provided many enjoyable reads as all good poems should and, even if you leave it just as it is, it will provide me many more enjoyable reads.

Thanks for posting

milo