An Overdue Critique for CharleyH

[champagne1982]

Do you remember that I had promised to take a close look at some of your poetry and tell you a little of what I was thinking about it? Well, I didn't forget, so here is a little something on this beautiful poem.

I would never wish to wound or insult a poet's intelligence or emotions, with those considerations in mind please remember these ideas are yours to use or discard as you see fit.

Let me first praise this piece, it is very rich in symbolism and imagery. You, Charley, are able to find the perfect word out of all those words that almost say what you mean. Lucky girl.

Ad Infinitum
by CharleyH ©

I.

Early morning fog rolled
off the Atlantic, ethereal over the shore. My feeling on the fog is that since it is mist and almost intangible, isn't using ethereal taking the image over the top and telling your reader too much about it?

The spill of salt,
like a relic of time
filled every breath I took. I love the symbology of the salt, when spilled so much evil waste of a precious commodity, tied with time, I see salt in an hourglass and last the salt-laden air that does flavour every breath.

On lobster boats bells dangled inside
moist white air,
and moorings clanged to waken the sea
with whispers of silhouettes
that stirred like morning
as I gazed over the ocean to you,
and a life not yet led. This morning fog and the awakening in it is excellent. Your arrangement of phrases inside this strophe keeps it from being boringly cliche. I even feel chilly.

Whether an echo past, Since nothing really echoes in mist, are you intimating that perhaps, the fog is lifting?
a déjà vu, perhaps
a longing or a knowing
of tomorrow
I had faith

that you and I would love.

II.

Faintly blinking through the canvass canvas of air,
like the song of seagulls, it culls
across the translucent fog
scavenging,
like me,
to determine whether it was memory,
future
or delusion.

Tides have changed
faith replaced by doubt. I can't see a way to redeem this use of cliche here and I'd (personally) drop it, unless you feel the redundancy is neccessary.

I sometimes feel lost at sea
with the haunting of pirates
searching for treasures that may not exist,
because this world of scientists
of theory and paradox
keep me from listening to whispers Keep is the verb to the subject world and thus should be written keeps.
and from seeing reincarnated silhouettes.

How do we know we are meant to be? It's my thought that you shouldn't ask anyone this question. It would be stronger, in my view, if you switched the we to I

III.

The salt still tastes the same when I breathe
and the ocean is still filled with the same water
though time has shifted beyond youth,
past mythology and dream.

You and I do love,
as we did in that strange memory,
that amorphous premonition
on the Atlantic shores
when I was young
and you were foam born on the other shore. If you were to change the word born to borne, the imagery would weave together in a way to make me shiver

Now, I know that you are real
even if I’ve never touched you
and that I adore you though although -- a nicer rhythm in my opinion I’ve never
felt your skin.

I rely on you, my love
as the sailor coming home relies on his lantern,
and it’s your faith
that makes me certain the sun will rise
above the horizon,
as surely as the whispers of these silhouettes
– past, present, future –
are the songs of each new life we lead,

ad infinitum.​

Thank you for sharing your gorgeous poetry.

edited to add: I'm hoping this isn't a repost of an earlier critique. I think I was writing one for the poem "Janiece" too.