Synthesis

[71degrees]

Hi, 71, a few thoughts:

No one sleeps
they are, at least,
restless: eyes closed,
the open arms
of an elm tree,
a mime show
of shadows
spreading across
rose colored
kitchen walls
I so like from "eyes closed" on down, I enjoyed picturing the non-sleeper as a tree and watching the show flicker.  I wonder if you could cut the confusion of the opening and maybe start Sleepless: eyes closed.

Who dreams
about love
with an old year
sputtering,
a new year
tip-toeing in?

Any memory is
a cedar closet: Big fan of the cedar closet. Have you thought through any vs each vs every?
notebooks
of unwritten
poems,
a tin of icebox
cookies baked
back in Wisconsin;
the dead limbs
of the winter birch
in the side yard
the dead limbs I think you could cut this line with a comma after yard or a change on the next line to "and" instead of "of".
of father as he lay
dying: femur, blood,
urine; nothing
working, not even
his dark sleep
I love the whimsy of unwritten poems and baked icebox cookies. You may want to consider adding a bit of that to the birch, leaving dad the dark blow.

I dreamed
about the strength
of this man’s trunk;
his language,
his energy,
the way his color
changed
year-to-year

As he lay dying, He lies dying above, this line doesn't seem to suit this poem here, I think you could lose it.
I wonder if
he ever dreamed
at all?

I never asked.

I hope a bit of this makes sense to you. I remember the birch in the side yard and the end lines. The pieces aren't quite fitting together here for me, although there's so much I like.
For me the short lines didn't help, I could see other stronger breaks and I wished you had made those decisions for me. I think a gentle edit could make a big difference. Good luck with it.

Yes, it does. All of it. And I agree w/all of it (well, MOST of it…you know me My original intention was a tribute to Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" (the line is used twice in the poem). The book is written from different points-of-view, and I tried to experiment w/different tree POV's in relation to my father. Tree themes have played a big part of my life (weird, I know). Long story short: I have a really good friend and we have a running joke (If you were a tree, what tree would you be?) and I keep thinking about this and the elm in my yard as a young child and the birch trees my mother loved and the cedar that smells so good and where keepsakes are "kept" and memories are stored and maples w/their colors and the raking and burning of leaves and the smoke and the multiple meanings of all these things and I write and I write and combine this with the seasons changing and folks who don't experience this are so deprived of another true poetical experience that I feel almost privileged and I'm talking too much now but, no, I don't mind your critiques b/c you understand…you get it and you're not all hung up on where periods go and what images should mean and poetry is not an art that delivers things on a pedestal with every answer with answers hanging from every image like directions to a child's game.

I'm done now. Sorry. Will come return w/an edit worthy of your time and your comments.

---

No one sleeps (Missing punctuation.  It doesn't make sense to have it lead into the next line.)
they are, at least,
restless: eyes closed, (By saying they're "at least, restless" after saying that "no one sleeps" is redundant.  We can already deduct from no one sleeping that they are also restless.)
the open arms
of an elm tree,
a mime show
of shadows
spreading across
rose colored
kitchen walls (Nice imagery.  Needs a period at the end of this.)

Who dreams
about love
with an old year
sputtering, (There are a couple of options here that would improve the reading of this sentence.  Perhaps put "and" between "sputtering," and "a new year", OR you can put in a semicolon after "sputtering," which allows you to carry on into the next line without it being an awkward run-on sentence.)
a new year
tip-toeing in?

Any memory is
a cedar closet: (Why cedar closet?)
notebooks
of unwritten
poems,
a tin of icebox
cookies baked
back in Wisconsin; (Are these previous lines an example of what's in the mentioned "cedar closet"?  The next lines after this seem irrelevant to that if so, and you can go ahead and end this sentence with a period in order to start your new ideas.)
the dead limbs
of the winter birch
in the side yard (Needs a comma.)
the dead limbs
of father as he lay
dying: femur, blood, (What brings us to a father suddenly dying?  This came out of no where with no relation to all of the previous ideas and confused me quite a bit.)
urine; nothing
working, not even
his dark sleep (The imagery and emotion in this is phenomenal to me.)

I dreamed
about the strength
of this man’s trunk; ("this man" as in the previously mentioned dying father?)
his language,
his energy,
the way his color
changed
year-to-year (Needs period.)

As he lay dying,
I wonder if
he ever dreamed
at all?

I never asked. (What a haunting closer!  Bravo.)

The imagery throughout this is nice but too various that I couldn't figure out what you were ultimately trying to convey.  It became moving and haunting near the end, but the relevance between the first half and the last wasn't quite there.  I was confused as to how suddenly death became involved.  There wasn't anything that lead up to that well enough for me.  The punctuation and capitalization was all over the place.  Cleaning it up a bit and adding more clarity would make this poem outstanding.  Nice work.

It will take a Herculean effort for me to put periods into this piece. But I shall bite the bullet b/c I think (and it kills me to say this…) you may be correct. Thank you for the time and effort to point this out to me. My head is often VERY hard…