Recursed

[dukealien]

Thanks again for the great critique, and (now) the good words.

Just now thought of changing "sobered" to "chastened," satyrs in their cups having been the first image that popped into mind rather than in their other ... pursuits.  But stet.

Think I'm going to like this forum.  Was half a coder myself ("programmer-analyst," i.e. Talks To Animals as seen from both sides) for a while, and one of the pleasures was being able to go to my boss's office, show work, and say, "Need another set of eyes on this."  He was a programmer, too, and in the same languages.

Five deer walk -- Excellent solution.
Antlerless  has disappeared
dim changed to dull -- Cool!
sprites -- what a great idea!

"sobered Fauns" -- You sly devil you, that fixed the faun problem and
added an interesting level of complexity that compliments the poem's intent.

I didn't think I called for that many commas, well, whatever,
I pretty much agree with ellajam at the moment.

My problem with advising anyone about the use of punctuation marks,
is that I rarely (as in never) use them in my poems. I vary the line lengths
so the end-pause does most of the punctuation. I do the rest by inserting
blank lines and varying syllable lengths and metric feet.

I also don't capitalize anything.

So you can see why I might be a bit creaky when it comes to those various
types of machination.

A good poem to start with, an excellent one now.

ray