Ranger6 May 2006

The beauty of this piece is that it keeps bringing me back to reread and look for more meanings. 'Align in mustard/for forecasted showers' caught my eye this time round. It has a fantastic ambiguity to it, conjuing both the image of mustard plants awaiting rain for sustenance, but also of the monks sheltering beneath leaf-like canopies to escape the storm. So (as I think I said before), the showers are prophecies, but whether they are favourable or not is down to the reader to decide (I like that sort of ambiguity, by the way!)
I didn't mention earlier that I thought your contrast of nature and structure was very good - you have the elements, the river, the tree; all life-bringers. Then you have the concrete threatening to smother them. And, of course, you have the temple in the backgroud which is a harmony of both nature and human construction.
I'm still not sure about 'scourge' in here - I think it works grammatically, but it feels wrong, somehow. 'Scour' would sit more easily in my opinion, although it's somewhat strong for the gentle nature of monks (it could reflect the 'struggle' theme though, I guess) so maybe 'wash' would be more appropriately - and fit with 'rain'.
Similarly, 'purge' just isn't working for me yet. I think I can see what you're getting at by using it but this is a case of you needing to decide whether thematic word choice is more important than the 'feel' of the individual sentences. To be fair, I think I've run into similar obstacles in my most recent submission, I'd be interested to see what you think to it.