[Jim Moonan]

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It's full of brooding and color. I like all the imagery. My sense is that there is a large metaphor at work. It is speaking in the larger context of earth's autumn, to my ear. Coincidentally, I, too, have tried to capture that mega metaphor in a short poem on this board.

It feels like it wants to be a prose poem but at the last minute line breaks occur. I wonder if it might be better effect to shorten the lines. Something along these lines (though I haven't given it much consideration — just wanted to give an example.):


Behind a chain-link fence and gate we never once
saw open, a songless autumn of grey leaf-light
and old water. Even in summer. Even in that summer
when whole fields died for want and the earth cracked
like a scab. Even then it was autumn;
damp and deep enough to drown a child.


Welcome to the Sphere! Hope you like it here.

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