Hey @Thediffident! Happy Review Day and Welcome to YWS! I thought I'd drop by your poem to leave a review since poetry is my very favorite.
Story
This poem had a lovely narrative that was easy to picture the adorable little bird waiting for the older sweet man who would come every day even when it was cold - there's an expression of love in the steadfastness of the two connected by their waiting. I felt like there was more to the story than was being said, and while I wanted it to continue and grow I also felt like the poem on its own was a succinct and complete thought.
Word Economy
In poetry especially poets are often conscious of what's called "Word Economy" it's kind of like when you have 10 dollars and you use those limited funds to stretch and try to buy a glorious meal, when you're writing a poem you have limited words and you want to stretch them and make them do as much work as they can so that your reader has a full and lasting impression. This poem uses very few words to tell its story, but I think some of the words could be used with even better "word economy" to make the story stretch and leave a more lasting impression - here's some examples of areas where there might be room for growth...
Imagery
Something that makes a poem really stay in your mind and connect is how an author uses imagery -> connecting with the senses (feel, sight, smell, taste, etc) in this poem we have the image of "little sparrow" and "wrinkly / old man" and "sweet smile" and "cold day" - I think each of those images could be expanded just slightly to give a little more personality.
"little" ... most sparrows are small, so this doesn't tell the reader much, what about saying the sparrow was "dusky brown" or "quivering" or "little and patient" - you see how that paints a little more of a picture?
"wrinkly / old" ... if they are wrinkly, that already implies that they are likely old, so maybe a different word could be used? "weathered with age" or "wrinkled and slower these days"
Doing just a little bit of a closer look at the images and how to expand and maximize them I think will really make your poem pop more.
Metaphor / Simile
Lastly I'd love to see this poem use a little bit of metaphor or simile. In poetry this is a technique that makes a poem speak at multiple levels and really expands the message. Maybe the sparrow could be compared to a statue, or a tree, maybe the man to the seasons? There's many options out there, but I think that's another opportunity to give the poem more depth and make your words do as much work as they can.
Conventions
Overall I like that you were fairly consistent with your capitalization - keeping one capital letter at the beginning and then omitting them the rest of the way. I think you may want a comma after "old" and you might choose to put a period at the end if you want it to have sort of an "end of sentence" feeling, but you don't necessarily need to either since poetry you can play with the rules of grammar and punctuation a little. Overall I didn't find any spelling or grammar mistakes to distract me from reading.
Overall this was a light and thoughtful little poem, and I'm glad I had a chance to read it. Keep on writing, I hope to read more of your poems in the future!
~ alliyah
Points: 133174
Reviews: 1154
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