Hm... I don't know what to say about this poem. I can see you are using the haiku style but this is no haiku. Also if this was intended to be short and simple it failed because of some of the complicated words used. I don't think you really captured or expressed that feeling too well. Maybe something longer would have been better? I don't know, this way it seems you didn't really cared about that person too much if this are the only words you can write about it...
There just aren't words to aptly memorialize a departed loved one. Your verse is like the final bow at the graveside; sad, wistful, unbelieving, not saying but conveying the shock and the mindful loss!
Very soulful, and it expresses an artist's heart and soul in it's construction. Well done, lovely lady!
and what are these angels, i ask myself (and you, the narrator)? i love the ambiguity of this closing statement... you've definitely captured that fleeting feeling all too well.
I want to dissect your poem just because I can relate and I found so much meaning out of this, I know this is more than just thoughts, sorry.
You had a bond or connection towards this person but this connection were broken suddenly, it gave you little or no time to see this person off, this also makes it difficult to comprehend, it was a sudden death.
All of this is always so much to grasp, it made you wander off, empty minded, unwillingly and in “formidable grace“(how can grace be formidable?, very nice), to pick up the pieces of this person or the pieces of your relationship, now broken. The way you said “to collect your angels”, instead of just “to pick up your pieces” made me think of how a graceful journey this must have been to come in terms with death. I bet you first said “to pick up your pieces” and changed it to “to collect your angels”
I liked your structure, the first stanza written in iambic Dimeter, and losing all structure towards the end. It shows me how you started to wander, trying to pick up the pieces.
i've been trying to write a fitting comment on one of your pieces for a few times now, but each time i am confronted with a loss of words. i don't know how to respond, perhaps because your words transcend my own experiences (especially the ones in this work). i usually write (relatively, at least) long comments, so i am sorry to disappoint, but all i can say is your minimalist, uncontrived pieces condense with meaningfulness (if that even makes any sense).
"continuity
interrupted
by the briefness"
of your poem.
...it reads like a checklist of emotions that need to be ticked off before you get the peace your friend has been given...
in that way it serves as an entree of sorts or at least it does to me. it runs well and breaks where it should but for something so complex as loss or bereavement, i think there should be more and i don't think there isn't more because you're scared of what might come out; rather you may not have fully considered your loss yet.
if and when you have, you should expand on the ideas you have set out thus far - this will then read like a poem rather than something you might find (quite appropriately) on a headstone.
claus oldenburg sculpted a slice of bread as a headstone for his frien ed. he carved in the letters e and d, missing out b, r and a but he kept the gaps as they would have appeared. it was a shorthand way of saying a longhand goodbye...
Submission Name: Tumult
