R.Boase's comments

This poem has the timeless and passionate quality of a ballad, but it also expresses the narrator's feelings on a specific day, with fine descriptions of nature and the seasons. And there is no facile ending. more »

I enjoyed the natural, innocent and conversational style of this young man who is looking after his mother-in-law's garden and has a real understanding of nature. It was such a change from all the depressing poems by tortured souls. I was tempted to choose Windigo, the flesh-eating monster symbolising human greed and consumerism, but I thought the 2 halves of the poem jarred slightly. more »

I was just surprised that nobody even bothered to make a comment!

It is very unusual to find allegory in modern poetry, and it usually strikes the reader as artificial. But it works very well here because it sounds like a real hitch-hiker's tale, a cross between Pilgrim's Progress and a road movie. One flaw is that the word "key" should be plural: "She told me that the keys to a life well-lived / Are the acts..." more »