I like this one a lot. It's quite stylish and cool, and creates its own poetic planet in 14 lines.

Michael -- isn't "Uma" (as in Uma Thurman) a trochee, accent on the first syllable? I'm confused.

Double posted twice in one week. A new personal record!

It seems that Ann was good at everything -- but her sister wrote the poem.

The twin could have a trochee for a name.

Shoot! Trochee! You really know how to embarrass somebody, Elise I've always had left-right problems. Now it's spread to iamb-trochee problems.

Roger --

The only reason that I asked the name question more than once was because no one answered it. (Or at least I didn't see the answer if there was one.) I have no way of knowing whether anyone has even seen/read a question if it's not addressed.

Michael --

I truly didn't mean to embarrass you! You just got caught up in Julie's thoughts about who the writer of this poem is (assuming that this poem is autobiographical). And then there seems to be general confusion about the whole trochee/iamb thing, with the word "iamb" being a trochee itself. I started to get confused myself!

not a critique, but a question about this line:

"you've always known which way your life was bound'

Is "bound' meant to indicate direction, or a tying-together, or both?
The reason I ask is that it struck me a just a little odd. I thought about this, and realized that it might be because "bound" as an adjective used in this sense is usually followed by "for," with the "destination" mentioned, or is preceded by a destination, e.g. "homeward bound." In this instance, "way" seems to indicate direction, whereas "where" would indicate destination. Can anyone shed any grammatical light on this for me? It will help me understand this use of the word better when encountering it in the future.
It is, of course, a wonderful poem with a great combination of very natural language at its surface that yields to great depth of thought and craft with reading and rereading.

Ed, it seems to me I've seen plenty of subordinate or interrogative expressions that end in "bound" without "for," but this lyric is the example that leaps to the top of the list: Can't help but wonder where I'm bound.

Adding: a search on "Which way are you bound" turns up a number of archaic hits. Perhaps this direction-rather-than-destination usage feels strange because it has become uncommon in current speech and writing.