Harvest

[billy]

a good narrative poem peter. i think the last two verse are a great finish and i enjoyed a lot of the imagery. instead of a line by line, i'll just concentrate of padding. words that can be deleted without any loss and often in doing so, add to a poem.

this is just a suggestion to show you what can be done by removing words. nothing has been added and it's still all your own words;

We returned to the orchards,
and walked among joyous families the
celebrating the harvest,
eating peanut butter sandwiches
at picnic tables near the old barn,
the last of the season’s yellowjackets
presiding lazily over the feast.

A noisy tractor pulled a flatbed
overflowing children propped on hay bales with
to the old trees laden with ripened apples,
and rutted fields the
filled with the last of summer’s pumpkin crop.
Meadows were littered It was late in the season and the
with the odd shaped and rejected.

We did not belong;
our children grown.
We, the old ones, invisible were
to the beautiful, oblivious young.

I wish they were still with us. How
I’d even take the middle one, the restless one,
that liked to run to the farthest corners, the one
that found the farm cats, full of fleas, i love this line and the next.
in a box behind the barn.
i think the first line needs a bit of clarity as to the who, you wish was still with us is/was. it could be done by adding a line underneath the 1st

We knew that we should go.
Summer had vanished,
a cold winter beckoned.

At dinner that night
we barely spoke.

i think you did a great job on the enjambment peter. and in the main you're narrative gives some good images. this is my favourite of yours so far. jmo
you could change some of the grammar such as commas to periods in order to give the reader a chance to catch his breath.

thanks for the read