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When I Go
If I leave
Will I make a sound
Leave a ripple
Or a small tread?
If I am silenced
Will my words be preserved?
Or will dust dispel my presence?
Time is short
Yet urgency is not my forte My footprint is small
My voice is unique.

Very nice!

Very interesting poem! I like the topic you chose to focus on. My favorite part is, "If I am silenced / Will my words be preserved? / Or will dust dispel my presence?" I classic question and yet so eloquently addressed.

I don't know if this was deliberate or a computer error, but I think you meant to move "My footprint is small" down to it's own line. Also, now mind you this is just a suggestion, but consider playing around with the capitalization of the poem. For me personally, the question 'sections' are kind of mushed with the capital letters starting off each line. For example, you could do:

If I leave
will I make a sound
leave a ripple
or a small tread?
If I am silenced...

See what I mean? Another way to approach this is to have spaces in between the questions (making a stanza)

If I am silenced
Will my words be preserved?
Or will dust dispel my presence?

Time is short
Yet urgency is not my forte My footprint is small
My voice is unique.

Making each question into it's own stanza allows the reader some breathing room and a place to actual consider that question for a while, just as the narrator seems to be doing in the poem. Of course another option is to combine both of the suggestions! That's one of the beautiful aspects about poetry: there are no rules and everything is acceptable. I just thought I would give you some feedback. One writer to another.

I look forward to reading more of your works! Happy writing to you!

Thanx, JLouise for the feedback! (the editing error I simply could not fix.)

Wonderful poem! This is very powerful and reflective. I do yearn for more connection between the imagery of a ripple and the image of the dust above your words, but the meaning is there nonetheless.

"When I go
If I leave"

So maybe you are not going? To me, this dichotomy at the very beginning makes all speculation after meaningless.

Ok Thank you. Some editing is in order.

For me the "When I go / If I leave" represents hesitation within the narrator. At first this could be considered as a physical departure i.e. leaving a hometown or an emotional one i.e. leaving a girlfriend or boyfriend. In either of these cases, the narrator seems to be uncertain if they will make that decision and the line could therefore be addressed to the person, item, or circumstance that the narrator is facing. The element of time, for me, signifies death and the narrator is therefore wondering if their life made any difference among the billions he or she lives besides. If this is more of the case, I would agree with FNAWrite that death is a certainty. Of course the age of the narrator could also affect this (for instance if her/she were a young child who has not grasped or just been introduced to this concept of life) and a person's religion could as well. I would try to keep some of these things in mind as you go about your editing.

"I would agree with FNAWrite that death is a certainty"

I'm glad you would agree with me - though I would have been more gladdened had you agreed with something that I actually said.

If I was saying death is a certainty, I would not have queried the writer "So maybe you are not going?" Knowing me, if I was trying to argue the certainty of death, I likely would have said something like "Oh, you're going."

What I said about the dichotomy, the conflict between "when" and "if" was that its existence renders the subsequent questions moot, therfore the entire thrust of the poem becomes less even then speculative.

"if her/she were a young child who has not grasped or just been introduced to this concept of life)"

Are you positing that the writeris so extremely young as to not understand the difference between life and death?

Sorry, I simply misunderstood your comment.

"Are you positing that the writer is so extremely young as to not understand the difference between life and death?"

I'm not saying that the writer is, but the narrator COULD be. There is no distinct age, gender, race or anything else given about the narrator of the poem. A writer and the poem's narrator can be completely different people. I took a year of poetry workshops and the number one rule was to, "Never assume that a poem's narrator is its author." I could write a poem about a boy and have the narrator refer to himself as I the whole time. You would have no idea that the person is a boy, and maybe I don't want you to know. This was simply the character that entered my head as I wrote the poem, but I want the reader to come to their own conclusions. I was simply giving mland2000 my take on his/her poem and the different ways he/she could approach the editing process. The possibilities are simply endless! If I were to find this poem in a collection that I pulled off the shelf, these are simply a few of narrator's scenarios that come to my mind. It's up to the author if he/she wants the reader to have a specific image/message or not. I just wanted to give some honest feedback on how a reader can interpret the poem since they cannot always get into the author's head.

I hope this clears things up. Sorry for the confusion.

"A writer and the poem's narrator can be completely different people"

When a writer of a short poetic verse uses the words "I" or "my" in 9 out of 11 lines, it is generally a safe bet that the writer and narrator are the same person.

How about mland2000 - speaking of/for yourself?

I am the narrator and the "I" and am female. Thanks for the spirited dialogue and the feedback. I enjoyed it