> Hello Colin,
              There´s a lot that I really like in this poem, the content, the flow of the narrative and the selection of details all work well. The final stanza is excellent IMHO and I love the final two lines. There are one or two minor queries that I´ll mention: first language, in line 8 I´m a little uncomfortable with `wave´s  tilt´, it reads a bit like the poet trying to find an unuaual expression and isn´t it a tautology? Waves by definition tilt. What about `and winked on the waves´? In S5 I´d look again at the word `tenderly´ and maybe change the phrase `her neck did a u´. Would `made a u´ read better? Or maybe find a new expression. The second area I´m wondering about concerns line breaks. I was rather surprised by some that you´ve got here. In S2, for instance, why does `just as´ have a line of its own? In the following line, why have you separated `snapped´ from `off´? I certainly don´t pretend to be an expert on this aspect, these are just queries and very possibly you have good reasons for the breaks you´ve made, but I´m curious. Actually, Gary made a similar comment about my last sub and I´m going to try to work out a few questions and examples for discussion regarding line breaks because there´s much that I´m not clear about.
Hope this is useful anyway.



Best wishes,    Mike



> Lähettäjä: Colin dewar <[log in to unmask]>
> Päiväys: 2004/02/17 ti PM 09:44:13 GMT+02:00
> Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> Aihe: newsub/assumptions
> 
> Assumptions
> 
> She hadn't said
> that she couldn't swim.
> When asked if she snorkelled
> she'd said yes. They'd
> set off through the lagoon
> to the white rim.
> 
> Sun shone on tanned backs,
> winked on wave's tilt,
> sent its bending lines like radar
> onto turtles, conches and coral trout
> and they'd waved
> with large underwater hands
> just as
> her snorkel snapped
> off and floated from the grip of stretched fingers,
> then sank.
> 
> He turned for another
> and couldn't grasp why
> she was low in the water
> with mouth to the sky
> and didn't talk when asked
> but gasped
> as the water drained from her face
> like grey stone.
> 
> His snorkel jammed in
> she swallowed and came back
> to the good-luck turtles,
> flopped weakly
> on the sloping sand.
> 
> Years later, her daughter
> couldn't wait to climb trees like Mowgli,
> ran on to an arm of beech
> leant tenderly down.
> It eased her up to the thick trunk
> where she slipped
> from the height of a ceiling
> onto her head,
> bent back till her neck did a u
> and saw for the first time
> behind herself.
> He saw altered years,
> thin limbs in a wheel chair
> long after
> she'd stood and cried.
> 
> At times memories stray into meetings.
> He finds them in streets
> like man-holes uncovered,
> enough to run his hands
> gingerly along each rim,
> sense how deep the pit,
> after a fall how the sky
> is never the same.
> 
> 
> Colin
>