Alexandra, I’ve been caught in my own weir of twiglets (more thorny than yours), so I’m too late to be of much help. Just for fun, though, I’ll tell you how my bad habits get me into trouble. I started with your revision, but since I tend to ignore titles, I fell into all the old traps: assumed the N was a person, wondered why they were tasting leaves, even tried reading in a fish that was “like a leaf,” but a little raw fish didn’t seem very tasty either. (I love sushi, but still.) Your title makes all the difference.
I also get hung up in the flotsam of that run-on sentence, particularly the missing subject and verb promised by “as,” but I do see that the muddle works for you, and at some point I stop looking for the grammar and just go with the words. “The lettings-go of fall” is lovely, but shouldn’t there be a comma after “awhirl”?
The cry “Forever yours!” is awfully loud. Would you consider losing the exclamation point and going with a quieter verb: “said” or “pledged” or (with “in”) “whispered” or “murmured”?
Your rhyme scheme is too subtle for my ear, but I do get enough rhymes to keep me happy, so that’s not a nit.
A little Frost in L4? As with some of your other poems, I had to be in the right frame of mind to get into it, but once I was, I enjoyed it.
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