Farmhouse, Southern France (storm on arrival)

"solar flowers threw their manes around/with total disregard"--nice, especially the play on flowers/flares (in my mind anyway!). Didn't have time to do more than skim this (have a kayak race to train for and scant hours of sunlight left) but will def come back to it tomorrow.

Okay--back again. I do like this one a lot! Your meter works great, and the imagery is strong enough that the meter is almost an afterthought for the reader (which I always think is a sign that a poem is working--the "strings" are invisible and you forget the puppets aren't really people, so to speak. Yeats and Seamus Heaney are great examples of that kind of mastery--I've been so blown away by their language, at times, that only later did I realize that the form is a rhyming sonnet or whatever). I only stumbled a few places reading this:

Are climes steep? I'd lose the parens here: "(and sloping glades of grain)" Maybe recast it so your sloping glades are steep or something.

"which turned from diamanté lens to drear
in clicking like an oaken farmhouse door." [not sure I get this--what turned? and what's "clicking" modifying?]

"-It was no stream of sun – but skewing cloud"

[replace weak phrases like "it was" with stronger constructs like "we lost the stream of sun, found skewing [?] cloud]--my replacement word choices are just illustrative; I'm not crazy about them either, but the point is that if you take passive, flaccid phrases like "it was" and make them more active and dynamic, it usually adds to the strength & vibrancy of the poem overall.

And no-one seemed to know quite how it came
to be so dark, or why it stayed so long [again, two "its" seems a lot and it's such an imprecise, nonreflective word here--I'd either recast this somehow or shorten the line and not worry too much about the syllable count]

"The landscape threatened violence that day-
as solar flowers threw their manes around [stronger, more threatening word than "threw" maybe? or maybe it's "flowers" that, er, throws me--I think the threat needs to be more implicitly reflected in this line; flowers just aren't threatening (unless they're creepy plant-things like bladderwort or Venus Flytrap.) ]

with total disregard; the screaming slaves [what are these? workers?]
in chain-gang rows.

I told you it had left a ribbon track- [nice--sort of made me think of cut to ribbons, because of the earlier mention of glass in heaps]

the scent of water in an earthen pitch,
and lizards leaping like a joyful king. [I like the lizard/king analogy (and, no, nothing to do with Mr. Morrison)--I've had the Roethke poem, To a Young Wife, in which he begins "My lizard, my lively writher" in my head for days, so I loved that you had a lizard here. I think "leaping" might be something else though--it's too remniscent of "leapin' lizards!" (maybe that's an American expression)

But still you watched the crackling, heavy orb,
like insects passed too soon for storm or grace

[what's like insects?]

an eye cast downwards – fractured morning ice
of hurricane and tempest’s broken tide.

Very cool. So many good lines and strong images in this! Good poem.

I like some of the imagery..."solar flowers" "a million beating fists" "screaming slaves in chain gang rows", but they just don't string together that well for me.

You know, Ranger, I always enjoy reading your poems for the language and clever phrases, but I'll be damned if I can pull many of them together and come up with some unifying picture of the poem as a whole. The meter is good here, and these are a unique ways of saying things, and maybe it's my own inadequacy as a reader, but can you come through with more clarity on the overall theme, if there is one?

I fell asleep after stanza #1.

pleasant blankverse. the first two stanzas paint a moving, deliberate picture, and i'm waiting for the payoff, but the final strophe doesn't quite deliver. after "earthen pitch," it reads like you're trying to jam too much information into a space that won't hold it. i'm all for clever metaphors, but in this case i think you need to leave the leaping lizards and passing insects. readdress the ending more literally and bring your main idea into focus.

What's up, buddy? Just wanted to say hi, I'll be back later to read your poem.

Dude! Too many verbs! And no pain or tourture at all? What about making it a love poem? With darkness and shit?

I am way too exhausted to read anymore tonight...I'll save my vote for later. I'm not sure what this is about, exactly. I think it is painting a picture...of which she is not very fond; and she, very fond are you of. It seems to be that...but then I may later find it is about a thousand other things...I know how you like to lay your layers between layers...nothing for the mind-numb, from you. I will come back to read again and expound upon that which sent my lobes leaping, and that which left me yearning for something more...you deserve nothing less than a thoroughly penetrating look, scathing honesty, and unabashed confessions when you excite the senses to such unmentionably exquisite places.

i think you go too far, here, ranger. i know you mean 'sunflower" but solar flower reads as solar flare, to me, at first--not that it will read like that to everyone, but 'flare' is a word often quick on the heels of 'solar'.

you've got some nice descriptions here, but the language gets blustery, rather than omminous, whioch is, i think the mood you want to set for this. although, i could be wrong.

Least favorite line, for me, would have to be 'and lizards leaping like a joyful king." I have no idea why you stuck that in there.
After reading all the indecition and comments about this piece, it seems clear you are not done with this, and aren't even sure where you are going, or what you are truly saying here. I am wondering why you didn't stick to the opening theme of you taking her there. Familiar to you, disliked by her. How it is through your eyes, and how it is seen through hers. I think that is where this meant to go...and then it got lost in all the descriptive phrases, along the way. I'll be interested to see where this ends up, in the end.