I hope that you do not take offence at what I say.
Here's what you wrote without the line breaks. It is extremely difficult to read with the line breaks, and it is not properly puntuated. You also spelt burgundy incorrectly. Probably a typo. Sorry.
"The sun shone on our January wedding day - a bright blue afternoon, me in my long burgandy red organza dress, its pleats brushing the grass, green as usual an ordinary California winter day with just a slight chill. My friend Ellie, startled by the color, said it reminded her of her red roses she had just pruned for the winter. She said we had been pruned and she wondered what would be our compost, which has to be of many things -- leaves, twigs, dead flowers, garbage. She said she thought our special combination was my love of words and his artist's vision.
We were not new to our shared bed; it was more a ceremony to affirm than to change and we had no money nor time for a honeymoon so we drove into L.A. for the theater to celebrate, saw Terra Nova at the Mark Taper Forum.
Terra Nova: New Land, about a failed expedition to Antarctica. Our return home was graced by stars and a few lacy clouds, but early the next morning it rained, the clouds over the mountains so black you could see nothing else.
About three in the afternoon I was putting our gifts away in the kitchen when he called from the living room and said, "Look! Its hailing!" I looked out our big picture window facing the mountains, but the white fall was too soft for hail and I shouted, "No! It's snowing!" We ran outside, laughing. The ground was too warm to hold the snow in our yard but we drove a little ways north and at 500 feet elevation higher the snow stayed, covering palm trees on 16th street in Upland.
We got out and threw snowballs at each other, and I thought of Terra Nova and believed we would grow old together, our hair whitening together, hands red-knuckled together, wrapped around the memory of the three red roses I carried that bright blue January afternoon."
There is nothing in there that tugs at my emotions. I think I know why people are so uninterested in poetry these days. It's as if the people who write it feel intense emotion when they write it, and they think that the people who read it will feel the same intense emotion. They don't.
Now I can't swear to it, and perhaps I'm horribly wrong, but this is something I wrote (I was commissioned to write to for a choral piece). And the composer really liked it. I think it does tug at emotion. It tugs because everybody knows exactly what I am talking about and they have felt emotions of pity and compassion for soldiers with PTSD before.
Every night he wept from war.
He couldn’t bear it anymore.
His mind broken, his heart sore.
His dreams haunted his tortured core.
One night he had a waking dream.
He looked up to see a starlight beam.
A shimmer of light on a silver stream
Made its way to his broken scream.
That silver stream rode the night
Riding to the rescue of a soldier’s plight,
Seeking to erase memories of the fight,
Bringing peace and love and light.
It touched that man’s injured core.
It brought healing and something more.
It gave wisdom, insight, and power.
And sprinkled him liberally in a silver shower.
When he awoke the following day,
He felt a wonderful spirit of play.
He smiled for the first time in many years
And such was the feeling, he wept some tears.
For the rest of his life, when he looked at the stars,
He knew that a heavenly light had eliminated his scars.
His life became one of jubilation and joy
That nothing would ever again destroy.
His life on track, full of love and light
All because of a star at night!
If you were to put the above poem into prose, it would still make sense, and it would still have the rhythm. Yours doesn't do that.
Please don't be offended by what I say. I genuinely believe that the lady who said that was right. I think the people writing poetry have intense feelings, and they think that the people who read the poems also have those same intense feelings. They don't.
