I think you're headed in the right direction with the poem. I get that you are describing a frosty morning in there and that it's God's work. You're working for the right imagery in there without being too wordy, which I appreciate. However, there are a few problems I see. First is that it seems to change focus in the poem. First you seem to try to describe what a gossamer touch is--and that first line is very powerful for that. But then it seemed to go from the identification of the touch to a description of a place, and then a slightly didactic end as you are expressing the reader's responsibility in such a scene. It's a little much for me. I could have used more and varied descriptions of what a gossamer touch is, which seemed like such a good topic to go from--trying to describe something so ethereal--and I applaud you for topic choice. The second problem I saw was that a little of the imagery seems slightly off to me. I don't think of a gossamer touch as being something a hard porcelain hand could do. Were you going for color? Also, I'm not sure "sweet" and "hoary" are the best adjectives to use for the next part; I can't explain it, but it just didn't work for me. Then again, that might just be me. I will end by saying, though, that this is a very ambitious and poignant poem that I'd very much so like to see the final product of. Let me know if and/or when you revise.
I like that it rhymes and it has a feel of a child's poem, maybe? There's a good meter here and the second stanza on draws me in. (The little greedy king threw me off a bit, but it's probably just me.) What I'm missing is some more description for the things you see--toward the end it becomes a list as the animals and whatnot lose action and just get noticed. Also, if it weren't for the mention of clouds at the end, I never would have thought that we were talking about things you could see in the sky. Maybe you should allude to it in places during the poem, such as the ballerina's fluffy dress or the lion's wispy white mane--something like that. With a little more tweaking, this will be a very cute poem for a sunny day :)
As far as content goes, I think the wording is spot on. You convey your emotion, you explain yourself and position well, you tell it in a lyrical way, and you end strong. What I would probably reconsider is some of the spacing. In freeform as I understand it, spacing has even more importance. There are lines here that should be short to put more emphasis on them, but by making all the lines short you don't get the effect and it just feels choppy as I read it. Combining lines is agonizing, especially if you thought you considered them well the first time (I know this well), but it will make for a more meaningful, powerful poem in the end. But even with the choppiness, this honest, thoughtful, meaning-filled poem is still far above a good bit that I've read on here, so don't stop!
This poem was quite an endeavor! I can see how you worked carefully to craft imagery that you wanted. You have a way with words that goes very well in the poem, creating the twilight scene and having the hushed feeling of the time passing. I like the "sharp clicks", the "shuttered houses with mother-gold", the "pulling night's blanket to day's chin". It worked very well for me until you got to talking about the night and the moon in the last two stanzas. If you meant for the moon to not sound as beautiful as the rest of the scene, that's okay, but if you meant for it to be a reflective, introspective, we'll-never-know-its-secrets, Mona Lisa moon, you might want to rethink labeling it with "yellow" and "sallow" as these two words made it seem sickly and wrong to me. The last stanza as a whole didn't work for me with the rest of the poem, also. Overall, though, I like the description of day to night that you have; this poem (with a little revision) is definitely a keeper!
Honest thoughts and I understand. Granted, I'm from the U.S., but you need to remember: you ARE only 17. You have time and again not to become status quo (or J. Alfred Prufrock). Even if you end up going the wrong way, the beauty of being young is that you have time to switch paths a couple of times. However, remember that there aren't too many people who are happy living in Spain and reading books and writing better books and learning the guitar and growing oranges who don't have a means to make money or get it. They aren't called "starving artists" for nothing. The key, if you don't have a passion for a career already, is to get plugged into something you can stand and can do reasonably well, then make the world a better place with the rest of your available time. If you find that you can make a career or easy living doing the out-of-work stuff, then there you go.
I wish I had this viewpoint at your age, to be honest. I had something more along your point of view, picked the wrong major at the right college, and ended up having a moral and emotional breakdown three years after college. Now I'm about to finish school again in a completely different (but better for me) career and am finding it much easier to pursue a life worth living when I go slower and more logically.
This may have been more than you wanted from a reviewer, but I thought I would give you two cents from someone who's been there. My niece is your age and I would tell her the same thing.
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