Hello Daniel,
             I´ve been sitting on this one for a few days, wondering about it. My first reaction was not entirely positive - there are things in it that I find grate a bit, although that may be just me. For instance, your use of language. I find words like `celebs´, which I take to be a contraction of `celebrities´ although I´ve never come across it anywhere else, unattractive. I was a bit bothered by spiders being described as `little men´. And then there was syntax. Does `by the millions´ refer to the children or the gnomes? And then interpretation. How am I to understand a gnome´s mother and what does it mean for a gnome to think of its mother? These were my problems, but I found that the poem wouldn´t go away. And as I read it more I found that these family gardens became a very effective image for the loss of the sons. I began to find new meanings (I hate using that word, but I can´t keep repeating `interpretation´ and I can´t think of another). The `doves and hawks..dancing´ became an effective image for the posturings of politicians on both sides of the fence and the phrase `eyes shut´ is devastating when read as meaning that neither side sees what they are doing, both sides are acting blindly. Even ´the little men´ became an acceptable phrase for the cannon-fodder in an impending ( and all other) military conflict. The pawns in these events really are like flies in a web. I could go on, there are other subtleties that I have found ( edges/ hedges is a master-stoke). 
So where does this leave us? I think you´ve written a very clever poem ( clever in the best sense of the word). I still don´t know what to make of some of my remaining gripes. It may well be that you´re functioning at a linguistic and poetic level that I´m failing to reach in my reading. Or it may be that your poem would benefit from some fine tuning of language, ordering of sentence structure and, dare I say it, punctuation. But you know best about what and how much.
I hope this rather rambling feedback is useful.


Best wishes,   Mike



--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
To good to be indoors.

I woke up one morning and no one was cleaning cars
the doves and hawks were dancing, romancing,
eyes closed, with only the children peeping
by the millions the gnomes and statues thought of mother.

No one declared this day a prayer-a-thon
comedians and celebs turned their grinners off
weathermen pocketed clouds, stuck up a high
little men twitched on silver threads like flies.

The people scooped up petals from their roses,
other mothers sons rode a wind, thrown like posies,
many a garden in a moment became forlorn.
The fathers will trim their edges, each Sunday morn

then silently whittle away with their pruning knives,
after washing muddy stairs, wives simply sit down, and sit.


Daniel Janes.