Original:
We were raised to look both ways
because witnesses are too curious
about the applied physics of cars.
We once dodged together, you and I,
our toes poised between traffic cones,
dashing between gaps in the flow of the world.
A signal changed, and the HOV lane
adopted you. Will I appear as a shadow
in your headlights, or a speed bump?
All in all, a somber little poem about separation. Sometimes a short but sweet poem can feel like a major victory after several larger poems crumble under their own weight. You mean a story came across in just three stanzas? Whew! You're darn right that will take up a whole page in publication!
But like any poem, it can be refined, so let's go top-down.
- The second and third lines are too dry and miss an opportunity for description. Are curious witnesses so bad?
- Any line that starts with "We once" and ends with "you and I" is within hazardous range of high school flair and should be changed. I'm sure my fictional girlfriend is just the most precious firefly in the jar, but please. Less fawning and more originality?
- Any edits made to this should push for adding internal rhyme. I love poems of all styles and sizes, including free verse and complex rhyme structures, but personally, free verse with specks of internal rhyme also feel great to read. It's the equivalent of watching the characters in the background of a movie scene. (note: all of the tricks of poetry are "like watching the background") This isn't a 100% dominant rule, but it's almost never a bad idea unless it's used to cute excess (and even then...).
- Does the poem communicate its intended message? Well, it's a tidy little love-lost fable that uses traffic imagery and metaphors. It's debatable what being adopted by an HOV lane means -- is that an orgy? an apartment of roommates? a family moving away? -- but the point is, the girl's gone and the narrator doesn't know if she will look back on her past relationship with consideration or malevolence.
Edited:
We were raised to look both ways
because witnesses are willing to pay
to watch the applied physics of cars.
We joined atop a smog-darkened median,
our toes poised between traffic cones,
dashing between gaps in the flow of the world.
A signal changed, and the HOV lane
adopted you. Will I appear as a shadow
in your headlights, or a speed bump?
