Ten words 

It snowed last night
small, pure, and very white.
Singular as vows, and trust, and morality.
Today, it's melted all away
and I can't regain it
no matter how much I wish
the weather hadn't warmed.
This muddy field wasn't inevitable;
just less than perfect.
Do you know,
Eskimos have ten words for snow?
I haven't any left, 
not even one.

Esther Mann's Questions:

I don't care for the part about he muddy field.  I think that it loses the focus that the rest of the piece has.  However, I am not sure how to go about fixing the metaphor. Any ideas? 

Also this is a very rough draft; would this be improved by putting it into a more controlled, possibly metered form? 

Does the tone of the piece lend itself to any specific form?

The Ants Go Marching One by One 
(For Margaret who told me things about ants I never knew.)

Something's altered, something's wrong.
What happened to that nestmate twinness of us?
Once it was impossible to tell
where I ended, and you began
two cloned ants, identical.
Did mere years produce that flavor of oneness,
that commonality of purpose,
that moving together one resolution, one reality?
I remember all the tunnels we hollowed out
each chambered ceiling of our catacombs.
Rooms we filled with larva mirrors of ourselves.
Never noticing what sprung up behind us
miles of twisted labyrinth, and endless walls.
When did you lose our purpose and lose yourself, 
a piece of myself, wandering still.
How can you be the deadly stranger I sense?
Beyond this guarded barrier,
the taste of another queen on your lips.
Living some other life so like mine, so different.

Esther Mann's Questions:

Does this poem carry the metaphor too far to the detriment of the subject?

Granted that I learned things about ants I never knew; but then who besides a biologist does know about ants?

  I think that most of this works; however, again I think that this might work better if I hammered it into a specific form.  Any ideas?

I know who you are 

There was a boating accident last week
three people in twelve were found dead.
Five others haven't been found at all,
just pieces of the things they wore 
Pants, socks, and boots.
Presumed dead, that's what the newspaper
wrote.  It's harder with no bodies,
There's no way to say good-bye. No one to look, 
to think, "I know who you are, 
I shared your life."

Presumed dead.  The papers never chart
everyday cataclysms .
I watched a whole family drowned once.
kind of quietly letting go.
Cold and silent,
they just drifted away from eachother.
No bodies to be found at all.
Only shell-like fragments remained floating through 
bare  rooms. No one even bothered 
to look for bones.

Esther Mann's Questions:

This is an older poem. 

I think that the title could be improved upon. While it does have a specific rhythm and is obviously in stanzaic form, I am not convinced that the last four lines of the first stanza work well with the rest of the poem.  Do they interrupt the flow? 

What else would help this?