Meter for dummies?

"

 slap hard and direct then!! 

"

Right - my call, so we'll start with a couple of lines from "Lush Dreams (I blame her roots)" - hopejully you'll recongnize that one Colleen - and work out how it scans.
Scansion is a kind of deconstruction, the metrical equivalent of the way people tend to tear poetry apart semantically and extract 'the' (some obscure) meaning or purpose behind the words.
Scansion is the analysis of a poem's rhythm, the patterns of sound that emerge when it's read. As Leanne says, it's all about patterns. We 'see' patterns all the time, in everything - that's the basis of perception. Patterns are all about repetition - stuff that becomes familiar, recognizable.

Traditionally, poetry was classified according to patterns - a regular number of lines per stanza, feet per line, syllables per foot - in the same way that music is measured in bars and beats, and karaoke in pints and decibels.
The time signature of a piece of music (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, whatever) tells you how many beats there are in a bar. Lines of poetry are like bars in songs. Whereas musical time signatures are numbered, the pattern of feet in poetry is named, but it's just another form of counting/measuring the pattern of beats in a line.

First line:
"Planted in our starkly muted garden"

Read that line aloud, and count the number of 'beats'. A beat occurs whenever a syllable is 'stressed'. Stressed? Ok - sometimes it's a pain deciding which syllables are naturally stressed - it's one of the many things we do without thinking (like breathing or voting). So, to make it more obvious, try making a conscious effort to put an emphasis on the syllables marked in bold...

"Planted in our starkly muted garden".

Hopefully, that sounded slightly bizarre/unnatural - even in in a Florida accent
So, read it again:

"Planted in our starkly muted garden"

That should sound less wierd - merely an exaggeration of the way it would normally sound when read aloud. (If not, maybe you should be asking Mulder and Scully for advice )

That pattern (assuming you repeat it throughout the poem) is called trochaic pentameter.
Pentameter, because there are five feet (trochees) in the line.
Trochaic, because each trochee (foot) has two syllables (Planted / in our / starkly / muted / garden), with the emphasis on the first syllable of each foot. You don't have to use the traditional name - you could call it 'trop', or 125, or even Amanda, if that appeals. Whatever fixes it in your frontal cortex.

Why did I decide it was Amanda, and not Damon or Marigold?
The line has five beats/stresses, and each stressed alternates with an unstressed. Basic mathematics. Ten syllables, five stressed, five not. It's an alternating pattern, so five pairs of syllables = five feet = pentameter.
There are four types of foot comprising 2 syllables.
A trochee goes : stressed - unstressed.
An iamb : unstressed - stressed.
The other two are generally used as 'variations' (we don't want to go there yet - variations are just too subversive)

So, it's trochaic.

If all that makes sense, seek psychotherapy before it's too late. If not, slap me - then tell me where I messed up.

The second line - "A withered citrus tree does execute"
What is that (metrically speaking)?

Either:
Trochaic (2 syllables, first stressed, second unstressed)
or
Iambic (2 syllables, first unstressed, second stressed)

If you can't decide, try the 'bold alternate syllable' approach, and read it aloud. One version should sound relatively normal, the other like a demented goth on 'medication'.
(Hey, I have nothing against goths - some of my best friends were goths etc.)

and either:
Pentameter - (5 feet per line)
or
Tetrameter - (4 feet per line)

Ok - it's safe to wake up.

[I'm sure someone will soon tell me/you if I've indulged in misrepresentation here - either that or they'll be terminally stoned and giggling hysterically at your misfortune *confident shrug* ]