> Hello Bob,
            For one currently enduring the rigours of the Nordic winter - 6 metres of snow and we haven´t seen the sun for the last 3 years - this poem certainly set a certain chord vibrating. The personification (!) of December/winter as a truck is an interesting one and I think it works well. My reservations about the content are all concentrated on the final few lines where it seems that all the wonderful creating of atmoshere and curiosity (I was wondering, and wanting to know, where this truck was leading me) led only to a collection of Xmas presents. I have to say that that came as a bit of a disappointment. It feels rather hackneyed. I wonder if it would be possible to remove references to wrapping and anything else that might suggest Xmas and end the poem with the mysterious boxes being endlessly unloaded in the dark, each endlessly containing other boxes etc - these images which you have already in the final stanza suggested to me ideas about the endless sequence of events that form our lives, receding into the unguessable future. 
There were also a couple of points concerning the style of the poem that struck me. You´ve used long sentences with many subordinate clauses and in some places I think that has created some awkwardnesses. The first two stanzas read fine. In the last line of S2 `you can stand...´ `you´ is also the subject of `long´ as well as the subject of `recreate´ in line 1 S3, but in S3 line 2 the verb `not slew´ must have the truck for its subject and this makes it a very awkward construction. I think that the syntax of S3 is also awkward in its final two lines with the extension of what is already a considerable sequence of subordinate clauses into the description of the interior. When S4 then begins as yet a further extension of the same sentence the reader is really under sme stress to keep track of where (s)he is. Is the first word `let´ an imperative or is the subject `you´ implied? In either case does the word `that´ in line 3 really fit? I felt a similar awkwardness in the final two lines since `by fingers´ is too far separated from `be rewrapped´. I can understand that you might have used long sentences to create the sense of the long, onward movement of the truck and I think that could work, but maybe the various parts need to join together more fluently. 
These were my main doubts about the poem. I think that the idea and the imagery work extremely well and I also think it would be fairly easy to make adjustments if you should agree with anything in these comments, but it´s also possible that I´ve misunderstood what you were trying to do. And on that characteristically self-doubting note I´ll pull on my fur boots and trudge out into the frozen wastes.....



Best wishes,   Mike


> Lähettäjä: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
> Päiväys: 2003/12/08 ma PM 05:09:32 GMT+02:00
> Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> Aihe: New: The Red Truck...
> 
> Here's one for some C&C:
> 
> 
> The Red Truck At The Heart Of Winter
> 
> December’s a 38 ton articulated truck
> full and powering down from way up north,
> snow almost as solid as ice in its wheel-arches
> and the sky it hurtles under is cast-iron cold
> 
> and you hope it speeds on, that motorways,
> dual-carriageways, roads with well lit signs
> will keep it in motion - if it hisses at lights
> you can stand well back, long for it to move,
> 
> recreate its momentum over trembling miles
> and not slew into the warmth of a house,
> become a wall with no fireplace, just the telly
> and a newsreader telling of ice on the roads -
> 
> let its rumble merely quiver the streets
> as it keeps on trucking through dark nights,
> that its tail-lights will reassuringly gleam
> distancing you from such fearful weight,
> 
> because it’s not on an endless journey -
> eventually there’s a ramp where it will squeal,
> beep and reverse before it’s back doors open
> and gloved hands will tug, lug out its heavy cartons,
> 
> drag its cargo from darkness to darkness
> and inside each pack, yet more boxes inside boxes
> that will be rewrapped to become awkward or pleasing
> in homes by fingers unaware of the cold.
> 
> 
> Bob Cooper
> 
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