Jim, the problem with the poem is it's much too abstract. I said that earlier then someone decided they liked it and I gave up. It's frustrating.
If you read any good or great poem it will be much more concrete regardless if it's met or nonmet. The met is better blah is a dead end. Write what works best for you. "The Four Quartets" would be no better in meter. Go read Frost or Heaney or any of the other memorable metrical poets. They turn the idea, the theme, into images and reflections that are grounded in what is seen and heard in the poem. Right now my favorite Frost poem is "Come In." There is death and eternity and acceptance of the unanswerable here without a single abstraction. If you want your poem to succeed work to make it graspable and not-graspable at the same time through sounds and images. That is the hard part of writing poetry.
One more thing, you learn from your bad poems not from the good ones. Praise is nice but that is it. When you post a mess and get feedback that is what helps if you can open your mind and control your feelings. Everything said isn't useful but some is and getting pissed-off blinds you to the good stuff.
Come In
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music — hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.
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