In The Woods

[Richard]

Hey billy,
This is a strong piece with quite a bit wonderful imagery. The edit is better, but there wasn't much wrong with it in the first place. I mainly have some nitpicks:

!st EDIT, thanks to those who left feedback.

In The Woods

The under-brush was strong
with briar biting at my ankles.
Beech saplings, silent
reached through thorns
and wept for space in God's canopy. -This is going to sound weird, but I feel like the two images in this stanza are so strong that they deserve to have their own stanzas. I would make the first two lines a couplet and then have a three line stanza. I know you have three stanzas right now of five lines, so that would mess up your structure, so maybe an option would be to break this into stanzas and add more to each part to get to five lines for each. Just a thought.

Sunlight, miserly though it was, -I love this image here. My only thought would be to expand on it. I want you to go into more detail, describing how the sunlight is miserly and playing with it metaphorically.
spattered the small clearing ahead
in a ray of moted-haze. -The expression "moted-haze" works well for me because I can just see what you mean in my mind.
Wildflowers waltzed with abandon -Why are the wildflowers so self-assured? Again, if you wanted, you could play with this image more.
swirling in the coattails of the tall grass.

Legs no longer bound, take me to a granite chair,
I sat and rested while my breath caught me up. -I love this line because it knocks a cliche on the side of its head.
Butterfly's quizzed my brow then abandoned me -The image of the butterfly's quizzing the brow could be played around with more, if you wanted. What was the brow's answer? How was it such a terrible answer that it made them abandon it?
flitting through the overhangs of elm.
This was the prefect place to sleep. -I like how the ending could mean actual sleep or imply death.

In The Woods

The under-brush was strong
with briar biting at my ankles.
Beech saplings, silent
reached through thorns
and wept for space in the canopy.

Sunlight, miserly though it was,
spattered the small clearing ahead
in a rain of golden droplets.
Wildflowers waltzed with aplomb,
swirling in the coattails of tall grass.

No longer bound, legs led me to a granite chair;
I sat and rested while breath caught me up.
Butterflies quizzed my brow and then abandoned me
flitting through leafy overhangs of elm.
This was the prefect place to sleep...

Overall, my main point is just throwing out the idea of expanding certain parts of the poem. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the poem as it is, but is more food for thought, if you want to play around with this piece. In my opinion, it's actually a good problem to have that I just want more of what you're doing here.

Thanks for the read,
Richard