Poem Revised

Below you will find a poem titled “Storm at Midnight”. I also posted this poem on the Poetry Espresso e-list, as I do most of my recent poetry. As I have mentioned, part of my editing process as I practice this near-poem-a-day regime is to listen to criticism from that list as well as any comments that are posted here.

Only one person (so far) has responded to this particular poem. She liked it, except for the word "forge" in the first stanza. She wrote:

I balked at the word "forge". You intend contrast but I don't [think] it works. "forge" seems laboured (pardon the pun), too heavy & interrupts the tone of the rest of the poem.
Nice poem though.

Well, I pondered that for a while. I still wonder whether the real problem is with the word "baptism" in the same line, since that word also carries a fairly heavy amount of connotative freight.

Anyway, since the remainder of the poem seems to me to work, I decided to try changing just that one line.

The re-written poem appears here, with an appropriate illustration. Click through, and let me know how you like the change.