My puddle

My puddle

I often think I see life through a puddle:
distorted, larger than life, fragile.
The slightest disruption breaks it,
obscuring pools of spreading water leak into my vision.

Rainforests become smouldering piles of charred wood.
The ozone layer thins to the thickness of tissue paper.
Sunny days morph into raging storms and hurricanes.
Our once-beautiful world is destroying itself.

Rain splashes my puddle, spreading ripples to its edge.
The waves symbolic: of the seas, of the world, of my mind.
I look up; grey clouds stretch over the horizon.
The outlook’s bleak.

- Don't use 'larger than life' to describe the perspective of life. Right?
- 'Slightest disruption': instead, give us an image of that slight disruption.
- 'into my vision': Vision doesn't seem to be the right word here.
- Rainforests don't become. They smoulder. Give the action to the subject.
- Hmm, I'm having a hard time reconciling the 'ozone layer' with your vision. This makes the poem seem more like it was written for an environmental science class. Try something like atmosphere. If you are writing a poem about the destruction of the environment, my advice would be to stay away from the images that are constantly used (deforestation, ozone layer, clubbing baby seals, melting ice caps, etc.). Try to find a new insight to enliven your poem.
- Splashes doesn't really take an object, and although you are allowed poetic license, it still doesn't quite work.
- If you use a symbol, do not tell us what it stands for; rather, show us how it stands for it. If you don't, then why use a symbol?

Overall, try to focus more on the precision of your imagery and language rather than carrying out your extended metaphor.

Your language shows true promise for this poem. Just separate the wheaty parts from the chaff.

Hey, sday!

I'm having a little hard time connecting those stanzas. The first and the third, okay, but what about that second one? To me, it's just in completely different league than the others. Well, maybe not completely, but you get it, I hope. The poem starts with a nice description of life through a puddle. Then the ethereal atmosphere gets broken by this oh-no-the-global-warming-is-coming thing. On the other hand, there's an interesting little detail: you say that the world is destroying itself, not that us people are destroying it. Is this an all-new point of view or something else? Hard to know. Then there's the third stanza, loyally continuing the puddle start.

Rain splashes my puddle, spreading ripples to its edge.

The waves symbolic - of the seas, of the world, of my mind.

This is my favourite part of the poem, it's beautiful.

Overall: I like the puddle thing, but the middle is just distracting. Maybe reword it a little or do something else so it would connect better with the rest of the poem.


See you around!
Demeter xx

Hi sday! I quite liked this.

Points to consider:
- Would the first semi-colon not be better as a colon? My reasoning for this was that it seems like the second part of the sentence is helping to explain the first part.
- I'll second timjim77 in saying show what 'the slightest disruption' could be. A pebble? A raindrop? Of course, you might not have been thinking about these types of examples.
- I understand Demeter's disconnect between the opening/closing stanza and the middle one. Maybe you could talk about a tsunami, or other water-related natural disaster, which would link with the puddle. I'm not sure if there's a concrete link between global-warming and landslides-that-cause-tsunamis, but that could be an interesting way to take the poem.

Positive:
- The piece is well-written. I had many favourite sections:

thins to the thickness of tissue paper.

Although you might edit this out, I liked the almost paradoxical 'thins to the thickness'.

The waves symbolic - of the seas, of the world, of my mind.
I look up; grey clouds stretch over the horizon.
The outlook’s bleak.

The final sentence was so simple yet powerful. Great ending.

I often think I see life through a puddle:
Distorted, larger than life, fragile.
The slightest disruption breaks it,
Obscuring pools of water spreading into my vision.

Rainforests become smouldering piles of charred wood,
The ozone layer thins to the thickness of tissue paper.
Sunny days morph into raging storms and hurricanes;
Our once-beautiful world is destroying itself.

Rain splashes my puddle, spreading ripples to its edge.
The waves symbolic of the seas, the world, my mind.
I look up; grey clouds stretch over the horizon.
The outlook is bleak.

I made a few minor edits to increase the flow and grammar correctness.

I love this poem, though.