I need help with this one too... In Memory of an Old Prospector?

Question

Old prospector

touch starved,

carved by a life

courageous.

Slow experience

indulgent of

long expeditions

through sandstone,

diverting thought

through seventy years alone.

Desire for expression

reduced to improvisation,

art on a rock,

tacit knowledge,

graffiti facit,

stone faced,

fossil.

Chiseled,

dreamed,

dead.

Answer 1

Coming from a desert state, I like what you have thus far collected in your word basket.  While some of the lines conjure too little image, the last three single word lines are terse and effective.

What do you think of rearranging your first four lines to something like this:

Courageous old prospector,

touched starved

Carved by a mineral life

love the way how "reduced to improvisation" is followed by reduced lines as if the poem was becoming a slide show. might want to add fossil to stone faced and end with the three lines of single words.

Answer 2

The only thing I would change would be the spacing, I think you didn't put enough on each line to make it flow easier.