is supposed to be a good one, normally, but I always find it so stressful. Change is inevitable, so it does make us feel hopeless very often. I think that's why even positive change can frighten people or they can be resistant to it. The image of writing on water captures that perfectly.

I had a little trouble getting used to the pace with the enjambment and commas, but it really works as long as the reader is willing to slow down and read carefully, which I think is important for all poetry.

An apt quote: "If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden." - The Secret Garden

Kelsey

and the discipline to remain on point is critical in our work. The craft of wordsmanship is surely here.
I think there are some awesome images here. The last stanza is great, the image of writing on the water is really well done. The on/off rhymes are interesting, interesting to mix free verse with it.
Reading down:
I have some concerns about the opener "I lit" ..what did you mean by that?
The poem reads well for the next few stanza's, nice word sound and and but then introduces this

.. wrong with this picture, it is
smashed by the banality and the observance
of domestic bliss, until

That came out of left field, as we say here. I think this is a very broad based statement which i cannot connect to the garden, that the picture is smashed by the banality of domestic biiss is so strong an image i need too much outside the poem to comprehend it. How is bliss banal? Also doesn't work with the meter and pace of the poem.

followed by
it's tight surface rippled in gridlines

otherwise it slinks and slops
in intricately threaded webs,
through rocks

I then get the feeling you are viewing the pool which is covered by ..a pool cover? I've had a pool and outdoor Jacuzzi with a garden behind it.. how it slinks and slops, the threaded webs..

The last stanza stands out as pure poetry. I know what it means but I cannot explain how.