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Hi Bill are you going to come to visit me??
yes poem threw me back to when I actually had to give a visitor  marching 
orders (to use a cliche :-))
-----Original Message----- 
From: Bill Wootton
Sent: Tuesday, March 8, 2016 9:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Visitors

At what point does a visitor lose
this status? When they leave, you
imagine, or when they overstay.

To visit is to spend time
with payers of attention.
When that attention strays,

good visitors leave;
other visitors move
to the unwelcome category.

The trick as a visitor is to
leave the visitee wanting
you to stay slightly longer.

The trick as a visitee or host,
to have visitors leave
before they tell all.

When visiting, you're
on borrowed time. When
you leave, you're back to you.

When you host visitors,
you're the you you hope
you always are, plus some.

Of course known visitors
differ from unknown visitors.
Your knowns may take liberties

and you expect this. Unknowns
can slip to knowns quite quickly
or hover on visitorly outskirts.

Without visitors, what would
you have? A procession
of bidden and unbidden family.

Visits make the world go round.
Places like Daylesford depend
on visitors, temporary stayers.

Countries like Australia roll out
the welcome mat to certain
classes of visitor.

When your features or language
identify you as different
from your host,

sometimes hard yards
must be trodden. But the best
of us treat visitors as guests.

And settled guests are bound
in their turn to accept their own
visitors. It's called civilisation.

bw