Hi there,
I found your poem when I was looking for items about autism to review for "a very Wodehouse challenge" .


GENERAL:
One of the first things I noted is that there is no mention of autism in the poem. Indeed, the poem is quite abstract, leaving a lot open to interpretation.

I got a little confused by the mention of Boo, but not of Jonah, in the poem itself. I concluded that Boo was a nickname, but at first I wondered if it was a soft toy or imaginary friend or similar.

There were a number of lines that I read multiple times, trying to make sense of. An eye-like impression on Boo's birch bark...what does that mean? Is it figurative or literal? I finally came to the decision that it was literal - there is an indent in the bark that he feels watches over him as he sleeps or sits.


CONVENTION:
I love your use of italics.
or sits alone.
That makes such a powerful line, especially left isolated as it is.

Cinn and I have been having a long-standing debate about the use of ampersands in poetry. She likes them, but they bug me. I'm not sure what your specific reasoning was for using ampersands instead of writing the word out in full, but I think for this poem, you could go either way.

(covers rock, loses to the scissors)
The brackets here work really well. Just a wee interjection, that kind of breaks up the resigned, defeated tone of the poem, and makes the reader smile a little.

Whipping leaves that lash & cut, pull & fall…
For days now, yet, the birch of him has stood:
These two lines (I've removed the extra line break just to make it easier to understand what I'm referring to) were the ones that confused me in the poem. I'm all for the use of figurative language, but I struggled to understand what you mean here.

I know that punctuation is up to the poet, and entirely subjective, but I found the inconsistency in your poem made some parts harder to understand. You use a capital letter at the beginning of a new line even though it is clearly part of the same sentence, and then in other places, don't use a capital letter at the beginning of a new line. For me, this made it hard to tell where sentences started and ended, and added to the confusion.


FAVOURITE LINES:
His mood impermanent as paper.
I really love that line, and even with the repetition, it still stands strong. It's such an interesting comparison too. Some paper has been around thousands of years, withstanding the test of time, and others are gone in moments. It's easily destroyed, yet can last for a long time with care. So it's very much open to interpretation, and I confess, I'm curious as to what you actually meant about the permanence of his moods.


FINAL NOTE:
Thank you so much for sharing your poem. It was an enjoyable read, and I hope my suggestions are of some value. Elle



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .