Out of everything, I think this poem has a really good sense of place, and my favorite part of a line is "with the scars of the roads cutting between them," because of how descriptive it is and simple.
I think you do some good things in this poem, and some bad things. I'll start with the good things. I enjoy that you're using a lot of sensory detail, it really makes the poem come to life. Your use of "stretching" and "rattling" "thuds" these words really draw things to life, but they're all pretty near the end of the poem and clumped together.
I think you need to narrow this poem down a bit further. You start out talking about nature as though your narrator is outside, and then we get on the road. While this is very true to thoughts, we go from one place to another, as wind or observers, we need to narrow it down in poetry to one thing. This will help people stay in the moment more and read it easier.
You also need to clean this up quite a bit. You have a lot of useless phrases that get repeated quite frequently and, as you put it, make it boring to read. "that passes by" "they go by" "of the day" "at random intervals" "middle of the day" "silence is placed upon the ears" [really wordy for 'they hear just the white noise of'[which is also wordy, but less contradictory of your next statement]]
Out of all of them though, I think the most useless line is "Curl into a ball, nothing else is needed." To me, this says that the individual is either A) Not getting off the bus ever. 2) Isn't real. III) Doesn't follow the group. or D) Really doesn't mind getting yelled at.
Not only did this bus just take people to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but it's letting people off when they have luggage there? The lack of physical description of where the bus has stopped really makes me wonder how this is something real, even though you have those great sensory descriptors in there which give us somewhere to be.
Moreover, I think that the use of so many different types of fields is a bit dramatic. I've driven across country plenty and we only really see one or two variations while we go. Sometimes it's sunflowers that season, other times it's corn and sunflowers, or just corn. I've seen wheat fields around here, and corn, and sunflowers, but never beans, wheat, sunflowers, and corn all in one drive. The places that mass-produce like that own too much land to really make it feasible in my opinion, and it's distracting from adding sensory detail about the wheat, or the hay, or the corn in the first stanza which could give you more sensory detail. Cows, cows interrupt a lot of fields most of the time and they have a very distinct smell you can take advantage of for a poem like this. Stretching reality, or simplifying it, should not be something you are afraid of doing in order to focus in on one thing.
I hope this helps,
Until next time.
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
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