Twelve boar blues.edit 1,svan

[tectak]

I love the imagery, but I'll have to be picky about some of the details:

On sky of palimpsest, the sun marks out a lower arc of light
as days erased fold into crowns of silhouetted fractal fronds.
"days"- Dusk is overwriting the sky, a really wonderful image, but surely it can only erase a single day.
Grey smoking Wraiths, damp Autumn’s breath, enwraps the forest firm and tight.
After "Wraiths", the comma means "and", or maybe "damp Autumn’s breath" is parenthetical, but either way you need "enwrap" for a plural subject.
Like widow’s rags of summer dead, black ravens croak and life responds.
A shiver tics along his flanks but holding still the boar inhales
Excellent.
to test the drift of cooling air. He knows his spoor will slip behind
when gentlest breeze blows in his eyes; in dimming light his vision fails
as atavistic senses rise to form a picture clear defined.
clearly defined
And here I stalk, on leaf deep trail with cracking twig and oozing loam.
"leaf-deep" maybe? Twigs would sound more natural.
I emanate the stench of man, my stifled breath a whistling blast.
"Stench" feels a little too strong- maybe "scent"? Then again, humans have feeble noses, so what an animal smells probably would be a stench to us.
Each foot fall on the drum-skin floor leaves signs of where I chose to roam;
my scent I paint on branch and stone, on briar thorn and bison grass.
This shotgun carried by my side will not this day be called to kill
"will not this day"- sticks out as a bit archaic
for he has gone to where the air is his alone, and time lies still.

Bialowieza
Autumn 2013

Again, just pedantic stuff. Overall, really great, though you do seem to have something against valid metrical substitutions. The iambs march by like a parading regiment.

Thanks sven,
no, not pedantic at all. All valid stuff. In order, defend, conceed.
Sure, but one day per day Hence palimpsest. Each day the sun is lower...so days.
You are correct. Enwraps. Credited
clear can work but I will put comma after it for the meter.
Yep. You got the animal sense thing. Stifled breathing sounds like a strident whistle,human scent is to a boar a mighty stench.
Not sure about the hyphen. No. I think you are right...and twigs. Credited.
archaic it is...but the subject can take it to keep the strict sonnet form. I am a bugger for regimentation sometimes. This one took me over!
Best,
tectak