NICU, For Dominic Edit #2.1

[ellajam]

Thanks so much, kole, for taking the time and for your useful comments, my response below.

quite a lovely meditation of birth

Song For An Early Bird (edit 2.3)


As pulse rates spike you're lifted from your caul
and held above a lacerated womb; i think 'my' would be more intimate than 'a'..expecially since you use i and we in the poem

Yes, I've had issues with that pronoun, even when it was her or your readers think the N is the mother. Although that's not what I had in mind I gave up and in and tried to just let them think what they want with "a". I'll think on it.

we exhale when we hear your raucous bawl.
I count the possibilities of doom
upon your toes, my abacus; barbed lines the enjambment is a bit strange here. i guess toes can be barbed lines though

That's not enjambment, it's my inability and finally refusal to get a sonnet line to hold what I want to say. Sorry it bothered you, that will take a lot if energy to rethink, I'll probably pass at this time but will hold it for the future.

on monitors and regulators beep
a sharp cacophony of vital signs.
You dance the limbo of sedated sleep, love 'dance the limbo' many implications here
machines to graph the flutter of your dreams. lovely contrast to life and machines
I trace your palm, declare your future grand, fortune told
our hopes for you of boyish pranks and schemes
are tightly held in one small grasping hand. tightly and grasping are redundant 

I like the two together, one action is the adult and the other the babe, one holding, one grasping which to me are slightly different. That said, two adjectives in one line, neither of which may be necessary, is probably one or two too many.

You'll be the death of us, our deepest pride
like any other child, but multiplied. the couplet is the weakest part for me. it feels biblical, go forth and multiply adam and eve. this works. i guess the lovely imagery of the quatrains just outperforms the abstraction of the couplet. what is deep pride? probably want a comma after pride and no comma after child. othewise some readings might connect death and multiplied.

Agreed, the last two lines are not strong enough. Ugh, still work to do, why didn't I just delete the newb posts that bumped this?  
Much appreciate the read.

anyways. lovely it is.