A Scattering of Poets

[ellajam]

Hi, Tom, a strong and moving piece. I like the title, it does double duty, the actual scattering and the separation. Some notes:

How fateful comes the end of days; the dust and ash of years
in thinnest layer.... a mica glint, a chalked blurred line upon dark moss.
A fine opening, love the mica/chalk/moss, a perfect description. Not a great fan of fateful. It says what it should but not in a way that sparks my interest the way much in the rest of the poem does.
Here dropped the wind, the very air he used to have and hold until
some prodding, pointed purpose drove it up and out of him...
I like dropped, it takes me with it. Have and hold is interesting, married to life for life, and I like the physicality of the separation.
cream-curdled words, how erudite his prose...to burst upon us all.
Cream-curdled reads sour to me, confusing.
There is a silence on this hill, as deep and high as some inverted lake
wherein we weep into our piled up tears, unseen through subterfuge
or watered eyes; we feel no runs upon pale cheeks, so drenched are we.
Love the inverted lake, makes me stop and think. It may be wrong but I might like a colon after subterfuge, the next line is the result. Of watered eyes seems a stilted waste, we've already wept and the rest of the line is so perfect.
Up swirls one stirring current in the aether that was still, an image
smoked from long-cold flames, alive again against brass-blasted sky.
I'm having a hard time with brass-blasted, maybe I need more time to get it.
It is not him. Some other spirit none of us yet know has claimed him now.
I like the ending, it sort of makes the title moot but such is life.

tectak
2017

Thanks for the read, it sticks with me.