Well, Doug, I'm sorry to hear of your experience, and of others worse. I
was just trying to get down to the pool quickly in my opening. Have been
reading John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, his black poodle in 1960. In
the deep south, he comes across someone who threw his kid in the pool and a
passerby says Tried that with my wife but they keep making it to the side.
Read that after my poem though so it doesn't inform it.
Bill
On Thursday, 22 September 2016, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I take Max’s point, but as someone who was thrown into the water as a
> child & luckily held up by a friend of my father’s, since I didn’t know how
> to swim yet, that opening seemed rather violent, & I expected something
> other than what followed.., which was a bunch of neat descriptions…
>
> Doug
> > On Sep 21, 2016, at 7:11 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Max, Andrew, Pat. Yes, conditional opening, 'if' implied.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> > On Wednesday, 21 September 2016, Patrick McManus <
> > [log in to unmask] <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> >> what action!!!did anyone just drown/sink??cheers |P
> >>
> >>
> >> On 20/09/2016 23:56, Bill Wootton wrote:
> >>
> >>> Throw everyone in the pool. They adopt
> >>> a stroke almost immediately. Most
> >>> freestyle it, face down, propelling from prone,
> >>> alternate overarming, scissor kicking,
> >>> Australian crawling, ice smooth repeaters:
> >>> nose, nipple, knackers, knee; leaning sideways
> >>> to draw unhurried breaths as they barrel
> >>> ahead, barely creating a ripple.
> >>> More casually, backstrokers reverse
> >>> themselves, lean back from supine positions,
> >>> thrusting faces, stomachs, genitals skywards,
> >>> expecting no impediments, like so
> >>> many half-animated, drifting logs.
> >>> Double-arming butterfliers launch themselves
> >>> from underwater, splay-grasping air then
> >>> fresh wet territory, bound-leggedly
> >>> threshing, projecting their exuberance.
> >>> Now there's us lot. Tentative foragers,
> >>> parting water in front of our noses,
> >>> groping forward, too soon sweeping backwards
> >>> to hips, legs frog-kicking, heads under dipped,
> >>> emerging, for a snatched breath, bent-backed,
> >>> and a fresh go at it. Maybe this time ...
> >>>
> >>> bw
> >>>
> >>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask] <javascript:;>
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations
> 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Four or five couplets trying to dance
> into Persia. Who dances in Persia now?
>
> A magic carpet, a prayer mat, red.
> A knocked off head of somebody on her broken knees.
>
> Phyllis Webb
>
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