Up! Up! My Friend

Struggling to get this poem to hang together... almost there... Paul, my best friend of 60 years, deals with multiple health issues... I appreciate your help.  Dewell


UP! UP! My Friend

(for Paul Gierek)





Wake up, Old Timer…

The day is slipping by

while you idle your pillow.



You mock the sputtering

winds of memory

in the mask of your self.



A tide turns in the trees

ushering autumn’s

change of wardrobe.



Wild wind moans. Where

has it blown the leaves

of your past?



Up! Up! Before

you become still water

beneath a sleeping wind.

 

-Dewell H. Byrd

Maybe you can make sure that "UP" is illustrated in each line or stanza?  Seems like you are "scolding" your friend.

UP! UP! My Friend
(for Paul Gierek)

Wake up, Old Timer…
The day is slipping by
while you idle your pillow.  (idle is a motor word)

You mock the sputtering  (stuttering is a motor word
winds of memory (winds is nature)
in the mask of your self. (I can't identify "mask")

A tide turns in the trees  (tide is water)
ushering autumn’s
change of wardrobe.

Wild wind moans. Where (back to wind)
has it blown the leaves 
of your past?  (maybe a cliche?)

Up! Up! Before
you become still water
beneath a sleeping wind. (I like the ending)

-Dewell H. Byrd

Dewell,  The part about autumn doesn't fit well for me. You use the weather then throw in a season.  If it had been one weather, one season, one person, one something else then it would be a list of sorts and that would work.  But here is  "winds of memory" "wild wind" and "a sleeping wind,  I think it would have been better served without the autumn picture.  Of course, if you were painting a windy autumn day...  Maybe you could insert that into the autumn scene.  Hope this is a thought that might help.  Dennis

I wonder if you  might just call it:  Up, Up.  Then put my friend in various stanzas.  This is your friend, so I'd playfully try to awaken him to images of wonder and sounds and beauty that you see.  I hear some scolding which produces guilt.  I'm wondering if that is really what you mean to do.  You can't control another person, so it could hurt the relationship you have?  One image definitely to keep is the tide in the trees:  great.  I'd approach it from another angle, that's all..... maybe with the thought that you do not want him to miss something wonderful.  You are a master of imagery:  maybe he will miss the moaning wind, and how can you share that with him if he is asleep or in his bed?  What if you came at it like a boy with a friend?  Up, up, come play with me, see with me, smell with me? (My husband's friend knocked on our door this morning.  He said, "Put your shoes on and come with me.  I have something to show you."  It was a big doe he'd shot.   The point is:  he wanted to share it with my husband, his friend.  So it was, come out, come out.)   That's all I've got, Dewell.  Hope it helps.  As you work on it, feel free to let us know and post a revision.     Pat