Loose Dreams I Can't Hold on to

Ah, this is beautiful!

I especially love:

Dreams are like feathers fallen,
or loose hair left on combs. Dreams are like sand caught on shoes carried
miles and miles from the sea.

The phrase "feathers fallen" especially, the reversal of the way it would normally be written surprised me into paying attention and somehow gave me a more concrete image than "fallen feathers" would have, and the whole past-tense passive voice thing goes so well with the emotion of the poem. I also really like this phrase because the imagery is so concrete, and not vague generalizations that are so easy to fall into when talking about something already somewhat vague, like dreams. One thing, I love the metaphor of sand taken miles from the sea, but it feels like the sort of metaphor that should be expanded on to unpack some of its complexities, but the poem just leaves it there and moves on - I think that if every line in this poem was as full of compressed thought as that, it would fit in better, but here it feels sort of lost in among all the other imagery in the rest of the poem.

The transition from the first stanza to the second stanza felt very abrupt. Rereading it, the abruptness kind of feels right, but it's still a bit odd to go from the beautiful, external, almost impersonal metaphors of the first stanza straight into a more confessional, story-telling style. Perhaps it's the generalness of the last two sentences of the first stanza?

In your second stanza, the line "all I have left to worry for are all the important things" feels a bit odd to me. Perhaps it's the too-similar sounds of "for" and "are", or the unexpected length of the phrase that you're worrying for (I don't know, I'm trying to think of examples where you'd say the phrase "worry for" and all I'm coming up with are short, specific things, like "you" or "them" or "the future", none of which quite fit into "all I have left to worry for ___" anyways...). Also, "all the important things" is vague, I don't know what those things are, why they're important to you - and maybe that's what you're going for, this nebulous cloud of everything that's important whirling around in your mind until it all feels the same and you aren't sure why you care anymore, but I think I'm reading a bit too much into that. Anyways, this got way too long for just that one phrase, all I was trying to say is that perhaps it could be worded to flow more easily.

The next thing that stood out to me was:

I was an anxious child.
I used to wish for cake, when blowing out birthday candles.

This made me smile, and I'm not sure if that's what you intended, but I do like it, a lot. It illustrates the point so well, and it's a specific image that's almost-funny and at the same time so painful. I don't know, the more I reread this phrase, the more it knocks me over.

I also love love love the phrase:

only ever fall in love in hindsight

This is what I read for, to stumble across something that so perfectly puts into words my overwhelmed underthought emotions. It's so true and I didn't realize that until I read it and the truth hurts but I love it.

I also feel like there's a lot of good stuff in the 5th and 6th stanzas, every line has imagery and ideas that ring true, but it feels, I don't know, a bit disorganized? I love the phrase:

If you carry your dreams between clenched fingers,
no one will ever take them.

but I'm not really sure what to take away from it in terms of meaning, because the rest of the stanza is saying that one should not let fear stop you from letting your dreams see the light of day, that you have to let go a little and trust before they can ever become a reality, but the wording "no one will ever take them" is ambiguous - I don't want people to steal my dreams from me. Maybe something along the lines of "no one will ever help you carry their weight" or "no one will ever take them and lift them up" would be more decisive? On the other hand, if the poem is following the narrator's attempt to let go then this is a nicely emotional starting point before the narrator becomes brave enough to trust in hope.

Also, the same thing with the sand metaphor applies here, I feel like these are a lot of metaphors appearing out of the blue, and I don't have time to explore any one of them because they're coming at me all at once. I feel like overall, the poem has sort of an uneven "compression rate", because some places are full of so much goodness and specific images and meaning, and other stuff (i.e., the clouds/sky/floating/flying, those kind of vague dream-related words) feels sort of bland, to me.

Also, the ending kind of confuses me. I thought we were talking about anxiety/fear keeping us from dreaming big and making us too scared to hope that those dreams could become real - but now we have to let them fly off on their own and stay dreams, unrealized hopes that have gone "beyond clouds and sunsets", and (at least, the wording of "let them go" gives me this image) leaving us behind? I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant, but it's nowhere near as effective (for me, at least) as the earlier:

I worry
that I only ever dream as far as I can see

and

if I dared to dream far and wide and light and carefree

because when it's phrased this way, "you" are doing the dreaming, you are travelling with the dream and it is stretching you/your mind past the horizons, it's apart of you that, if you were to "let go of" it, you would be the lesser for. I don't know if that makes any sense, sorry.

Anyways, I know I wrote more about the bla/odd stuff than the good stuff, but the good stuff is just so beautiful that this is already one of my favourite poems on YWS. All right, I'm done now. Sorry for the wall of text, I hope some of it is helpful! As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed reviewing this!