Young Writers Society

Greetings, adelaide!

I haven't reviewed poetry in a while, so just bear with me a little.

Here I stand,

beneath the strong oak trees.

Listening quietly,

to the gentle breeze.

I thought that this whole thing could be one sentence. It might be better for the flow, since it's sort of read like one sentence.

Here I stand,

in the lush green field.

Watching patiently,

natures secrets revealed.

Again with the one sentence thing, but maybe this is just your style. Just something to consider is all! Natures should have an apostrophe, and maybe on that last line you might want to add a little something else. Like, "Waiting for [nature's secrets] to be [revealed]". "Nature's secrets revealed" is really just a piece of a sentence, and in that form it doesn't go so well with the "Waiting patiently" bit. You could also shift the sentence so that "patiently" is the last word of the first sentence, and the last line is it's own sentence.

Here I stand,

near the pale blue lake.

Upon my tongue,

the salty sand grains betake.

I had to look up betake. It seems like an old word with a weird way of using it, and I really don't think it fits here! The phrasing of the last two lines is sort of weird as well, with the tongue first and then the taste, when a person would normally say, "The taste of ___ on my tongue". Rhymes can make things tricky, but don't sacrifice how the rest of the stanza sounds just for the rhyme! If you can't make the second rhyme fit, you could always try playing around with the first one. For example, you could make that second line, "near the lake of pale blue", and then you'd have to rhyme with that "oo" sound instead, which could be easier.

Here I stand,

between the rosemary bushes.

It’s alluring smell,

My minds peace it increases.

You definitely need a rhyme here! If you're going to have a consistent rhyme scheme, then the only place you should drop it would maybe be for a concluding stanza which is different from all the rest. Again, you could adjust the second line to be "bushes of rosemary" to rhyme with a different last word. Or you could change it altogether, like saying the "bushes of rose" or "bushes in rows" and have the last line be "my mind's peace grows", which is pretty much the same! Just a small note, but its doesn't need an apostrophe, and mind's does.

Here I stand,

with the roe deers fawn.

Softly stroking

its soft fur predawn.

Deers here is possessive, so it needs and apostrophe as well. Also, predawn is like a time period, so I think it needs "at" there, like "at nightfall" or "at dawn". The other thought I had was making it "before dawn" instead, which sounds nice and takes care of that.

Here I stand.

In this lush meadow.

The pale water on the sand.

Rosemary bushes home to the sparrow.

While the deer roam the land.

You've mentioned both deer and rosemary before -- do you mean to repeat them here? I feel like it's a little bit redundant at this moment, and might be more powerful if you either picked another image or if you repeated all the other things (i.e., the oak trees, the lake). Well you do sort of have the lake, but it's not as obvious. Just something to think about here. It's also a little bit choppy because of each line being an individual sentence, so maybe you could play around with punctuation a bit.

Overall, I thought your poem needed more of a point or a purpose. I'm totally guilty of not doing this in my own poetry, but it would be really good to have one. While your imagery is really nice, it doesn't really have a conclusion or even a beginning because it's only description. I liked the part about increasing the mind's peace, so maybe that would be your point -- in that case, you could drop little hints about peacefulness, and in the end make more of a statement about it. Or about living wild or loving animals or whatever it is you want. The ending just falls a little bit flat at the moment.

Nice poem! I like the imagery and repetition. Feel free to take or ignore my suggestions as you like. Keep writing!

-Q