The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Thanks both, much appreciated.
Jackie, it's a moment of reminiscence set it the present, inspired by the cloud. The aim was to slightly break down linear time but i hoped also for it to be intelligible. I'll ponder.

Thanks again

Luke

It forms in a pocket of blue to the east. I watch it kindle, grow so unlike the clouds back home that roll in from the west in human form,  muscular, two-toned, steeped in the strut and glide of an Atlantic wind.   Nothing about it is familiar and I’m no meteorologist of the heart   but something i...

Loved this.
My only thought was that you cut lose s1 and gain a degree of clarity. The exclamatory in s1 definitely holds the child's voice but then so does s2.

Very interesting, Phil. Really appreciate your time and insights here. If you don't mind I will take most of your suggestions, and gratefully. Do you think, however, 'flayed' might be better than 'flailed', given there's little left on the bone?

L

very nice, Phil.  Yours is certainly slicker, and I really like the browning core. It does lose the relationship idolatry angle, though, that was the initial impetus for the poem.  For instance, 'we held each other too long' - on a pedestal etc.  It's that perennial question of how much to sacrifice...

Thanks both - you're right about ethanol. Perhaps I'll just go for 'booze'?!
Borrowed robes of saliva is an allusion to Maceth but I don't think it's working. Could drop this line entirely?

L

Some good suggestions here but you wouldn't miss any marks by leaving this as it is. Lovely writing. Prevailing feelings of guilt and nostalgia - the primacy of person over place, despite the indivisible relationship between them. This tension really comes through.

L

Now I know  we held each other too long  on plinths of slate before altars of mizzle, wind.   Then home, cariad,  finally, to steep in material rains, gales that stripped us almost to the skin  like two tongues in borrowed robes of saliva. Little left on the bone to sustain this relentless processio...

Mark summed this up excellently. No need for fancy garnishes. 
Good poetry, albeit (intentionally) without the usual flourishes.

 The extended metaphor is nicely and not too obviously extended. Just right. 

luke 

P,s could the title be improved? Perhaps something that places the poem geographically?