The Eleventh Month

[Knot]

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Hi TqB

The wind at Lometa is always blowing

off the northern plains

or south from the Gulf.

(I either want more geographic details, or cut these two lines)

Yesterday it was blowing northeast across traces

(‘across traces’ of what?)

winter worn fables of your passage:

(this seems out of context)

your charcoal pit, the gardens you started around the cabin

(you might cut this line, or reposition it, the next few lines are so much better)

a far flung empire of guava outposts

now burnt yellow by ice

like cabins raided by Comanches

(any way to avoid the repetition of ‘by’ here?

And tidy up the image, empire/outposts/cabins)

the grove of oaks we cleared of cedar and brush

(do you need ‘and brush’? It’s just you’ve ‘and brush and the chipper’, too many ands)

and the chipper, the orange metal beast

(I think you could reposition ‘orange metal beast’, maybe after ‘roaring to life’?)

made all the way from China

(‘made all the way from’?)

we unboxed and reconstructed

(either this line or the next one, not both)

and brought roaring to life

to make your dreamland mulch,

(is this detail relevant, to the poem? I don’t think so)

now wrapped in torn plastic tarps

huddled under a Spanish oak on the ridge.

(It all falls apart for me in this next/last part

the ’future works and days’ seems like restating ‘gardens you started ... cleared grove’ ... etc - and don’t advance the piece.

Is the ‘orange metal beast’ the ‘monster’?

You repeat ‘passage’ - not sure why. Or what it was you witnessed.

Personally, I’d try and return this to the always blowing wind, leave the apostle/testify stuff out of it. It’s too heavy handed (for me, anyway).

Here in this eleventh month since that misunderstood monster

took you away from where I knew you

I remember you here

dreaming of these future works and days

growing hemp, raising goats.

Your passage was brief

but I was here to witness it

and like any apostle

I must testify.

Best, Knot

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