03-25-2012, 04:44 AM
But at least you can confidently plan a barbecue 
I am not convinced that the simile to begin with is a strong enough introduction to the piece -- for a start, the two things being compared aren't really all that different, so it's almost as if you've got a simile that thinks it's synecdoche. You could start the poem with "when everything dies" and lose nothing.
Otherwise, I have nothing much to suggest. I love your final stanza, particularly your final line, which is not just a lovely image but also very philosophical.
(PS. My brother was in kindergarten before he even saw rain. The water restrictions were so severe we were only allowed to turn our kitchen taps on between certain hours, and then only for cooking/drinking purposes. No showers, only baths that the whole family shared -- not all at once, just shared the water! And we could only flush the toilet once a day. The cracks in the ground were brilliant fun for kids, we had our own canyon landscape and some of them were too wide to jump across. That's why I laugh when people complain about only being allowed to water their gardens on every other day, or not being able to use sprinklers)
I am not convinced that the simile to begin with is a strong enough introduction to the piece -- for a start, the two things being compared aren't really all that different, so it's almost as if you've got a simile that thinks it's synecdoche. You could start the poem with "when everything dies" and lose nothing.
Otherwise, I have nothing much to suggest. I love your final stanza, particularly your final line, which is not just a lovely image but also very philosophical.
(PS. My brother was in kindergarten before he even saw rain. The water restrictions were so severe we were only allowed to turn our kitchen taps on between certain hours, and then only for cooking/drinking purposes. No showers, only baths that the whole family shared -- not all at once, just shared the water! And we could only flush the toilet once a day. The cracks in the ground were brilliant fun for kids, we had our own canyon landscape and some of them were too wide to jump across. That's why I laugh when people complain about only being allowed to water their gardens on every other day, or not being able to use sprinklers
)
It could be worse