After so many "Anniversary Reviews ~ Summer Break"  from you, I'm so pleased to be able to return the favor with an "I Write "  review this week!

I thought this was an excellent piece. The Villanelle form is beautiful when done effectively and you did a great job with it. It's not easy to have those repeating, reordered stanzas descending throughout the forum and I thought you handled it well. It was a beautiful version of this elegant form of poetry.

The only note I have, which isn't so much a criticism of the piece itself, is that this is listed as a contest entry (and stored in the "Poetic Musings" folder of your portfolio, and it would have been great to know if there was a specific prompt you were responding to, or if it was completely open in terms of subject matter and you just had to do something that matched the required form. I'm a big fan of context to help understand why you chose a particular form/approach (if there was an outside impetus for it).

Overall, this was an excellent poem that I really enjoyed reading. Nicely done, my friend!