Red String ties

Okay, here you go dear:

A red string
Ties two souls together
Creating a crossroad between
Separate lives.

[Your beginning is clear and interesting but not as poetic as it could be. This could quite easily be the first line of a story if not for the line breaks. I would suggest something like:

'Fastened with a red string,
like the bloody layer between flesh and bone,
a crossroad is created between separate lives
where two souls meet.']

A crossroad was made in the place
By the billowing willows
Under the tunnels of the slumbering giants.
In the summer when
The sunflowers tossed their heads in the
Warm, sticky breeze,
And the shadows of the clouds that swept across
The ocean of wheat,
Golden waves rolling to the beat of the wind.
Watching your eyes reflect the sky as I leaned over you
That sunflower blue.
So bright
That it seemed the [s]sky[/s] skies are reflecting you
Creating alien messages
As I chased you
Across those wheat fields
To your laughter that rang
Like bells in the sunshine. [This stanza could be cut down vastly. Think very carefully, what is important? And it's not the setting that matters most but rather these two souls. You could remove the first half quite easily and then expand a little on the second half to give a stronger sense of personality and connection. If you want your reader to feel sad when these two are torn apart, you need to show your reader who these two are and why they're so good together.]

Serendipity played a part
When I brushed past you,
And in a passing comment
That led to a full blown conversation
Across the street
Before your maid ushered
You to your next lesson [This stanza is good. Not fantastic but it moves the story on. However, it does need more punctuation. You need a full stop at the very end and I'd suggest commas after conversation and street. Also, you might want to think about making this more exact instead of being so general. Maybe slip a little of the conversation in or some description as to how she reacted or a hint as to why this is so significant. Why it matters. And it must to warrant a mention in the poem.]

The god of crossroads must’ve been having a laugh
When the next day we were stuck in a sudden hailstorm.
When we ran across the wheat fields
Under my patched jacket
For shelter under the abandoned temple, [I'd suggest a full stop here.]
I asked why you were there
And you gave me your mischievous smile and
Asked if I believed in fate [Full stop here.]
I laughed it off then
But of course your father wasn’t amused. [You could cut words out here as well and I think it could run more smoothly. For example, the first half could become something like:

'The crossroad God, he died of laughter,
the day we met below an abandoned temple,
trapped by hailstorm madness
with only my patchwork jacket
to deflect the cold.']

The Red string must have been strong
As that didn’t stop you,
And within [s]7[/s] seven risings of the sun
While you played the dutiful daughter,
We were back again
And racing through the ocean of grain
And [s]danced[/s] dancing to the forgotten songs of another decade
Played through an old record.

While you were in my lap
Lying on the floor
Of my shabby apartment,
Above the noodle shop downstairs
Listening to our favourite song
On the radio.
The sound of the old fisherwomen
Advertising her wares,
The lady downstairs yelling for another beef soup,
And the men drinking to golden memories
Rolled over us as if they were in another world. [This stanza could be cut down a bit. It doesn't add an awful lot. It doesn't give your reader the sense of knowing these characters and feeling for them.]

Crossroads meet briefly,
Like starbursts of light
Until they swing off at [s]in[/s] a tangent [Full stop here. And maybe start a new line too.]
When your father the state’s magistrate [Is it really necessary to know his profession? The mention of maid already shows the family has some standing and this seems a little randomly placed.]
Ordered you back home
We were only linked by that red string tie.

You left and I was left with a box of memories,
And the old record of our favourite song,
Except that red string tie.

For when I was walking in the crowd
[s]In[/s] On a smoggy afternoon of a cloudy day
Between the sea of grey suits,
I saw a flash of brilliant sunflower blue. [The ending is good and nicely effective.]

Okay so there's other things that could be neatened up too but I hope this gives you enough ideas to be working with and I'll be happy to take another look when/ if you get a re-write done. Before you start any editing, try to think of what message you're trying to convey to your reader. Do you want them to feel happy and hopeful at the end or do you want their separation to linger and consume the reader?

Good luck with this,

Heather xx

Hello Flora.

I think the main problem with the piece is that it's very jumbled and drawn out. Each paragraph seems to randomly portray something but it doesn't work with one another to fulfill a message or a theme. I think the only idea that I got from it was the idea of a red ribbon being like a crossroad.

Line by line comments:

A red string

Ties two souls together

Creating a crossroad between

Separate lives.

This has to be the best part of the poem as it actually does help create effects which allow the reader to associate with a certain theme.

Your second paragraph to me seemed more like lines of visual descriptions. In a sense, it does paint a picture in the mind, but it doesn't expand on paragraph one except describing the crossroad as being sunny. It's also quite long winded. I think I could portray the same idea with a metaphor or extended metaphor.

On your third paragraph, it starts to go off the idea of a red ribbon being a crossroad to an encounter with another person.

What follows after seems to be fragmented memories that doesn't seem to go anywhere. I don't really get the point of the rest of the paragraphs. Personally, I think that if you had only the first pargraph, it would have been much better than having fragmented paragraphs that ramble off to nowhere. That isn't a good sign.

If you have done poetry for the short text achievement standard, you'll notice that the poems are very condensed. For a poem to be good, every single word must contribute to the overall theme of the poem in some way.

Read some good poetry, have an ear for it. Do not fall into the trap that many other novice poets have: Writing long winded descriptions that do nothing to get to the main message.

Andy.