A Lament

[Quixilated]

Hello Liz,

I very much enjoyed reading this. Here are some thoughts, but if I’ve completely misunderstood, just know it’s not you, it’s me. Grasping the true or more subtle meaning of poems is still in the “under construction” phase of my sojourn here.

The first half of the poem reads like an environmental/conservation piece, a sort of “stop torturing nature and let it breathe” which gears the reader to read the rest of the poem with that mindset, which then makes parts of the following stanzas seem strange and out of place.

I read it several times before I decided this was not a lament about “what humans are doing to nature” but simply a lament about lamentable things. For if this were about nature being tortured, then the third stanza would not be a lament, but a cheer of victory as nature breaks down the man-made and fills it with moss and bugs, and takes back its turf. Also, if this were a conservationist poem, the final stanza about the Popsicle would be out of place.

When I made the adjustment and focused solely on the lamenting of things, I discovered that everything fit together just fine, and not only did I like the poem, but could identify with it. There are so many little grievances all around, destruction, loss, the ending of a thing. The trouble is, you almost need to give a hint at the beginning that this is what’s going on (or maybe not if I’m the only one who struggled with that), because there are so many environmental indicators it’s really hard to see past that at first.

If I’ve completely misunderstood and it IS a lament about nature specifically, then the bit about the barn and the Popsicle should probably be cut or reworked. Though I like them in their own right and would be sorry to see them go, and the Popsicle line could almost stand alone as its own short poem.

Anyway, a few comments on specific lines below.

A Lament

The other three stanzas are all about the same length, whereas this first one is twice as long. Perhaps this is part of the reason I attributed greater importance to this first part and read all the others as sub-categories of this first theme. You could easily cut this in two, you even have an “I grieve” line right in the middle. This would lessen its weight and make it more even in length and in subliminal significance.

I grieve for the shorn-short grass
       that wanted to seed,
       and for the dandelions
       that won't witness
       their hair turning white. Love this bit about the dandelions.
       I grieve for the nature pressing, pressuring,
       whose cycle is again rebuffed.
       I grieve for the thistles, the clover, Recommend a paragraph break here.
       the yellow flowers, the mushrooms
       that would have grown,
       provided habitat and food,
       shade and shelter –
       for rabbits, fawns, snakes, spiders –
       from my curious children
       and other predators.
       Every month or so, we make this same choice:
       to neuter the grass. Personal preference, if you do cut this in two, I would put these last two lines at the end of the new first stanza, right before “I grieve for thistles etc.” And then you'd probably need a new closer for the new second stanza.

I grieve for the tree-dwelling caterpillar,
       with yellow and orange tiger stripes
       and gentle porcupine spines.
       My children explosively worshiped it, "explosively" seems the wrong word, it moves the violence too soon. The image is too violent and renders the crushing anticlimactic after.
       then dropped and crushed it underneath
       unknowing and innocent feet.
       Its life was as short as their attention spans. I like this.


I grieve for the red shed next door, Me too. Not that one, but all the dilapidated in general. They seem so forlorn. I love this stanza.
       decomposing on foreclosed property.
       A fallen gutter, a broken window –
       time is always pressing down on it,
       pressuring it into the dirt.
       Moss has overtaken its roof;
       the earth owns it now.


I grieve for the orange-fallen Popsicle not sure a hyphen is what you want here
       diminishing in the shredded grass
       like decay captured in time-lapse film. Love this line/image
       We wash it with the green garden hose,
       eroding it like chalk-soft rock, while my
       2-year-old melts into red-faced tears.

Hope something in all this ramble helps a little.

--Quix