To Construct a Poem

Just wrote this one straight out a few minutes ago:

The first beauty I ever lost
was the beauty of my Grandparents farm.
They sold it.
I couldn't believe it.
Twelve years old.

A little wooded valley, perfect,
high hills on every side, except
the side of deepest woods
that on and on for miles
along the river went.

My dog and I and rifle
walked those woods.
At eight we first began our hunts,
at eight we brought game home,
and everyday we found new lands
and built America.

They sold it.
Gramp's arm was gone.
In winter up the winding drive
a quarter mile to road, too much
scooping for that age'd arm.
They sold it.

I was last to join the
car that last drive out
--upon the hill and out of sight
they honked the horn.  --I,
yet in the woods below,
shot seven shots across the water;
why seven I don't know-- and somber
with my dog went up to them.

Those seven shots...  For many times
those seven years I've not forgot, and
many times I've dreamed...
A rail line passing through,
a village built...
It's my woods.  Lost.
Lost woods, lost youth, lost permanence.

I had a fairly strong feeling, but no sense of a structured poem.  I had intended to rework it on the blog, showing the various versions, and commenting as I thought I found insight as to how this kind of construction happens.  Oddly, having typed it out, it seems okay the way it is...  I will make some comments later.
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The poem was written "correctly", that is, in terms of how I think I particularly do poems.  I was pacing, began thinking of matters of loss, thought particularly of this early loss, felt the pain keenly, and so started to write.  The exceptionally prosaic first two lines should indicate that at first I had no sense of the poetry of the thing, though I did recognize I was going to put it in poetic form.  I had no sense of its structure.  But then I wrote it straight out and it was fundamentally okay just as I put it down.  I suppose the structure was simply the story, it's not as if I haven't been through this moment a billion times.  And the language was rhythmic because that's the way I think when the sense of poetry is on me.  So I guess it really was written the way I seem to write all my poems: the first line, and everything else following.  The poem was "there" right from the first, I just didn't have any sense of it being there because it hadn't just been discovered by my brain, it's been there most of my life.  --So not much to be learned as to construction as a willed manufacture.

My sense of rhythm?  I have it, I don't know what it is.  I know it's informed from all the prose I write, and in prose I have only one rule: b follows a.  That is, the second half of the line must balance with the first, and the second line with the line preceding.  It's only a felt matter of what's appropriate, but in prose that's certainly enough, because in prose, rhythm (and sound) is certainly far secondary to sense.  Sense always is of most importance, but in poetry rhythm and sound take on far more importance.  I seem to have a reasonable sense of what works, I don't have any conscious set of rules.  --And no set of rules seems to be forming.  I will pay attention, and see if something sometime comes to mind.

On construction.  What I had thought I would be doing was something akin to writing a tune.  I wrote tunes only one summer once in my life.  I developed a procedure.  I would walk, thinking about things.  I would soon be thinking pretty much of only one thing.  A mood would form.  I would be humming and singing sounds to myself.  Pretty soon a tune would form that would accord to the mood, then I would simply write words as lyrics that expressed the subject and fit the tune.  Worked pretty well.  Only time I had an annoying problem was once when I had a cold and couldn't sing, so just imagined the tune in my head.  I did get a pretty good tune ( and pretty extensive and complex); but when my voice came back I discovered it was way beyond my register, both top and bottom.

This is somewhat the way I thought  would do this poem.  I would have a general sense and feeling (emotion) about what I wanted to do; I would "hum to myself" many words, sketching here and there; and pretty soon would have a poem expressive of the mood, which I would then tighten a bit and cut to create some sense of flow.  That still may be a legitimate way to do a poem.

I still have no clear sense of what I intend as structure.  I note I seem never to have more than four beats to a line.  I do seem to establish a pattern for a few lines, then break it.
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Damn!  She's racking up more points.
She's got the most by far already.
Torment!  Damn!
Why won't she write!?

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