Shalom,

I like the overall environment created in your poem; there seem to be quite a 
few extraneous words.  Please see my comments in the poem.

kol tuv, Ryfkah

In a message dated 08.20.03 10:12:09 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< I'm not sure about this one. I've tried cutting out all the ineffective

lines but end up with a blank page. Begin again?


      Rowing


Our oars dip

and through the fractured light we glide   [skip and?]

afloat on sky and wooded shade.

All land around this little pond

falls on water that reacts,

a living eye on earth's cold stone,  [you have lots of prepositions in these 
few lines – can you say it differently – prepositions slow a poem's read down]

unfolding its own sun and mirrored moon.


The water drips like silver from the duck's dry wing [skip like?]

as it floats upon reflected land.

I look beyond to hard and heavy hills, [I like alliteration.]

whose folds are leonine

beneath their veil of blue-grey haze.


I row and row and do not stop or sink or stay aware [delete one of the ors?]

of groaning oaks with branches far above,

the gravity of air,

of ballast of  bouldered slope and sky's slate,

the leaden clouds and rain that might

in the next hour descend in pallid sheets,

of words like discontented leaves [again lots of prepositions]

and this body straining like an anchor in deep water. [perhaps place your 
simile before this body?]


I row and row as a way of being

and continue to exist

on currents I can not foretell,

that none can save me from. [don't like dangling prepositions]

I row and row and do not drown [but do not drown?]

but listen as the children sing in this orbed boat [skip but?]

and trail their hands along a cool and shining skin. [do you need both these 
modifiers?]



It does not trouble their minds,

nor its depths where all sink in the end,

dimming even the brightness of a mirrored face.

I held their hands when they first came to life,

as I pulled them up from non-being

from their womb of dark water

and into the astounding light, [skip and?]

whose hands in turn one day

will slide upwards

and away from mine. [skip and?]




Moffat, April 02 >>