Amanda D'Costa! You stick with the metaphor all the way through and obviously put time into the meter and rhyme scheme, and the story/voice is nice. Simple is good, but the endstopped rhymes are too basic (for me anyway). I like simple rhymes too, but if there isn't some interesting language/imagery for contrast, they usually fall flat.

A good example is Frost's most famous, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"--the rhymes are simple as can be, as is the meter (both of which absolutely fit the poem), but the language is so lyrical and fresh and the images so strong and original that the simple rhymes become part of the poem's strength).

Stretch a bit. You've obviously got the interest and willingness to think about what you write--now take it to the next step. Which poets do you like to read? What is it about their work that works for you? That's always a good place to start.

"Everyone's a book of blood; whenever we're opened we're red." -Clive Barker from The Books of Blood.

Kinda comes across as a nice kids poem. So in that way I don't mind the simpler rhymes :)

Well, this was more like- done at the spur of the moment. I thought of something and got connected and one to one the piece seemed to flow. Too simple and kiddish - but then, makes me also feel nostalgic about a lot of things gone by, stories that the book of my life would tell.

Maybe you mean it as metaphor, but I doubt it. Seems an old man would ponder Jordan's River and wish he'd been read, absorbed, and written. Instead, he's just tried to make facinating and new what was neither. Elderking's recent poem is like this in feeling.