I really like the thought of this.

The way you expessed it was marvelous!

"As we cup fireflies in our hands, close to our chests.
Little glowing secrets, waiting to be told. " --LOVE it!!


"breaths" instead of "breathes"





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Across the face of the Earth, her ruby cheeks shone; Winds of whisper buried seeds of rumor, made her secret well grown.

Phew. Thanks for the spell check. I need to stop writing at 3am and thinking everything will just come out all right .

"Our “smoke” rings never did come out right."
without a doubt, my favourite line;
because it gives a personal touch to the relationship.

an interesting juxtaposition

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Dum spiro spero.

What a nice contrast between the two short stanzas.

Nice first line, very nice way to describe the sound of cicadas.

Interesting that you ended each line in the "summer" stanza with a period. It gives the poem a montage-feel of images, yet these images are connected--so I'm torn between whether or not I feel you have used the periods to create the right mood. Then again, the punctuation doesn't obstruct the flow of the poem at all--I just read it straight through and was put in mind of someone in a rocking chair and saying or thinking each line with each back-and-forth.

The puncutation in the "winter" stanza is definitely more traditional. The use of commas instead of periods gives the end of them poem more momentum and effectively concludes it.

The line "When we finally set them free... triumph" seems to contain too many syllables compared to the other lines. I suggest breaking it up at the comma:

When we finally set them free,
the world will know our triumph.

This also makes it more symmetrical with the winter stanza, the syllables of which range from 6-12 for each line.

Very vivid language. Great choice of imagery in so few lines.

Good Spot!

I wholeheartedly agree with you (didn't notice when I wrote it) and have since gone ahead and changed it to make a bit more sense. This hopefully also help when its being read aloud.

I hope you don't mind publicity, I've featured this in a journal [link]

--
Dum spiro spero.

No prob

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Across the face of the Earth, her ruby cheeks shone; Winds of whisper buried seeds of rumor, made her secret well grown.

Sorry, sorry, sorry for coming back to this so late. Here are my opinions on the piece:

It is strong, overall. You do a good job of placing an image in the reader's mind. There are just a few places I think need polishing.

"As we cup fireflies in our hands, close to our chests
Little glowing secrets, waiting to be told."

This is an incomplete thought. Omit the "as" and it'll sound much more complete.

"In our hands" might be a little redundant. I think the reader can easily make implications from simply having "We cup fireflies close to our chests..."

Also, there needs to be some sort of punctuation after "chests." Otherwise, the lines look kind of awkward. You use punctuation throughout, so why not here? Be consistent. Try using a colon or a dash to connect the lines better.

To me, "told" is a very weak word with little connotation. Choose something stronger; for example, since you mention "secrets," a word like "whispered" would help solidify the idea of the line. Or maybe even use a different verb to make the idea more original!

"the world will know our triumph."

Why is this the only line not capitalized in the entire poem? I don't get it and it's distracting. I suggest being consistent and capitalizing it with the rest.

Exclaiming “Look. That one’s mine!”.

Over-clarifying this line by saying "Exclaiming" really mitigates its poignancy. Also, the period at the end is not needed. To me, the line would be much more powerful simply as:

"Look. That one's mine!"

I don't think it is necessary to separate both poems with a big line in the middle. The reader will understand that the "two-poems-in-one" are separate but interrelated simply by the separate stanzas. The line makes the poem look sloppy.

"Our “smoke” rings never did come out right."

The apostrophes around "smoke" are really not needed. The reader already understands that the rings aren't really "smoke," so there's no need to over-clarify.

"Extending our lolling tongues and craning our necks,
Twirling for each new flake."

This is not a complete thought. Edit the last line accordingly so the lines don't sound awkward.

Also, "lolling" seems a bit overdoing it. You have two ideas in the line with the tongues and the necks, but see how you don't modify "necks" with anything? It would be more poignant to keep your ideas more parallel... not to mention it'll help the rhythm more.

"Extending our tongues and craning our necks,
We twirl for each new flake."--to me, this sounds much better.

"As they alight on our taste buds,
We’ll shiver with pleasure."

"Alight" brings too much attention to itself and seems like a superficial word to use, not to mention you're only repeating your ideas from the previous lines. The word also doesn't fit with your casual diction. No one says "alight," and you give no reason from your previous casual word choices to appropriate a "fancier" word at the end of the poem.

Also, the ending line was weak and cliché. I don't really care about anyone shivering with pleasure--it's a term I've heard plenty times before. Also, "pleasure" is a telling word, not a showing word. It seems like you're just spoon-feeding the message. The reader should already understand that the people lolling their tongues out for snow are doing it for the pleasurable feeling... so work on solidifying these images instead of giving up at the end and spelling things out for the reader.


Also, one thing I wanted to point out for the entire poem are your enjambments--they were very unexciting. Your lines are very sentence-like--you line-break only when a line could safely end with a period. Try highlighting ideas with your enjambments. If I were to edit the first few lines of the poem, I would probably do something like this:

"In the summer, a buzzing laughter
Fills the air, echoed in dusk’s failing light.
We cup fireflies in our hands, close
To our chests, little glowing secrets
Waiting to be whispered."

To me, the poem becomes much more dynamic with enjambments like these--it'll shift around the thought processes of the reader, shedding light in new, interesting angles.

Play around with your enjambments and see if you can come up with some interesting lines!

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Clearfield Review: Prose, Poetry, Art.