It depends on what you’re trying for, Bill. If you want to keep it at the level of the child’s (?) perspective, then stopping at gawk seems right; if you want to shift to the later adult’s added view, looking back (as so many your recent poems do), then perhaps a version of the last 2 stanzas is called for. I’m assuming ‘the heat man’ is the child’s perspective, & he’s not necessarily truly great man? Not sure of that aspect. How the adult role impinges on a chid’s…
Doug
> On Jun 10, 2020, at 5:57 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Patrick. The gawk line was the original finisher. I just thought
> the poem might have been too much about the gawk so I gave more great man
> but even there the gawk got in at the end I suppose.
>
> Bill
>
> On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 8:04 pm, Patrick McManus <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Bill my penneth? I would finish on gawk
>>
>> On 09/06/2020 23:52, Sheila Murphy wrote:
>>> Metaphorically rich and in fact replete with meaning, Bill. Thank you.
>>> Sheila
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:40 PM Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The great man waits in the car
>>>>
>>>> The great man waits in the car outside
>>>>
>>>> The great man waits in the car outside with his wife
>>>>
>>>> It is my doing
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The great man had knocked on the door
>>>>
>>>> The great man had stood on the threshold with his wife
>>>>
>>>> The great man and his wife had retreated
>>>>
>>>> when I said they’d be home soon
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I hadn’t felt able to invite the great man and his wife
>>>>
>>>> into the house to wait for those they wanted to see
>>>>
>>>> so the great man and his wife waited in the car
>>>>
>>>> while I kept moving, window checking from time to time
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It might have been twenty minutes before they arrived,
>>>>
>>>> those the great man and his wife had come to see
>>>>
>>>> Now all were gathered in the front room,
>>>>
>>>> the griffin, his great partner, the greeters and the gawk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The great man’s wife is dead now
>>>>
>>>> His visiting days are over
>>>>
>>>> Last week the great man was elevated
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> to the ultimate service title
>>>>
>>>> He would at least have been offered
>>>>
>>>> a cup of coffee inside while waiting
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> bw
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My question for all is does it need the last two stanzas which I added
>> this
>>>> morning?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
When thugs were in power, educated people were the first
to feel their fists. It was so pathetic, really, how so much violence
came from someone feeling small. Small of mind, and it did not
matter how big the sword in hand, that essential smallness remained, gnawing with very sharp teeth.
the scholar Janath Anar
in Steven Eerikson’s Reaper’s Gale
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