Draft 3: Forever Legacy

[Quixilated]

Hello, I'm late to the party, so if you're done tinkering, just ignore.  Also, there were elements of the other versions that I liked, or that helped me understand the poem, so I might be referencing all versions.  

Let colonizers, who drain the springs  This line did confuse me in the earlier versions, I started looking for metaphors that weren't there.  Colonizers plus springs and youth has me thinking of historical figures like Ponce de Leon who searched all over Florida for the fountain of youth.  People who, like a cuckoo bird, have stolen someone else's nest for their own posterity.  
expecting youth, turn to dead marble  Referencing, perhaps, statues that memorialize the interlopers. 
and blur my memory into rainbows  Rainbows could be visual, the rainbow seen in a spray of water, the arched shape of the hose, or symbolic like the colors of the pride flag.  The rainbow plus hose water makes me think of protests and/or pride parades being disrupted.  If this is off base, no worries, we all bring a little of our own experiences when we interpret.  
that smell of hose water. Forget me in the way
the wind remembers breath.  This last line is lovely.  The comparison between the colonizer at the beginning who wants eternity in a fountain of youth and is granted eternity in marble, and the narrator who seems to disappear into a rainbow mist is thought provoking and emotional.  

Some punctuation changes were made.  The new comma is in red, and two were removed.  An adjectival clause should be encased in commas, hence the red one.  The conjunction does not need a comma in this case. 





Draft 2: Abiding Legacy

Let conquerors who taste every spring,
expecting youth, turn to dead marble,
and leave my memory in rainbows  I liked 'leave my memory in rainbows'.  Like the narrator is saying 'leave me alone' to the colonizers.  Again, I didn't read the other comments, you probably changed it for a reason and I like blurred, I just also like leave.  It's like the narrator is planning to put this moment in time or this memory in a capsule and live (or not-live) inside it--forgotten as an individual, but remembered collectively as a forever piece of the event. Also, I might be reading too much into the whole thing, but for my interpretation it works. 
that smell of hose water. Forget me in the way
the wind remembers breath.


Draft 1: Abiding Legacy

Let conquerors who taste every spring,n
expecting youth, turn to dead marble—
I'll leave your memory
in rainbows that smell of hose water
to forget you in the way  I'm not sure why the subject of the poem has changed from 'you' to 'me' in the edits.  I didn't read the other's comments, so there is probably a good reason.  But the poem was more emotional for me when it is a tribute from the living to the dead.  It's like saying, maybe you were invisible and silent and erased, but I'm remembering you with this poem and now you live forever.  I don't know.  I liked it this way.  But it's also good the other way, and it is somehow smoother to read in the final edit, so that is perhaps why. I just didn't want this version to die without getting to say my comment. 
the wind remembers breath.

I enjoyed this poem, and whether I have properly understood it or not, I still very much enjoyed what it meant to me.  I think it's shaping up nicely.  Again, if you're done tinkering, then no worries.  I just didn't want to miss getting to comment.  Well done, and thank you for posting. 

--Quix