Ah, then I need not speak. This reads as full memoir, Bill, & so, as poem, I could see it cut & perhaps a bit more fragmented...

And as it appears below I wonder about the lineation toward the end of stanzas 1 & 3. I'm assuming it should be more like st 2 throughout?

Doug


On Dec 11, 2013, at 5:28 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Yes Max. Thanks to yours and Pat's eyes, I have cut 20 - 30 words. Perhaps you are right about the accretion too. It's a pile but not yet fully layered.
> 
> Bill
> 
> On 11/12/2013, at 9:56 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> 
>> lots to enjoy here for me, 
>> despite the feel after a while of almost superfluous accumulation -
>> 
>> and I expect Doug to weigh in about economising.
>> 
>> Prosy bits? eg, 
>>   Remove your hand eventually to Nicky's consternation. 
>> Maybe there was urgency to get it all down, and the fulness can be a virtue.
>> 
>> Max
>> 
>> 
>> On 11/12/2013, at 7:39 AM, Bill Wootton wrote:
>> 
>>> Bendigo
>>> 
>>> Brother Dan and I played the car game
>>> in the front yard at Lucan Street: we'd run along the top 
>>> of the four-foot high two-tone red brick front fence, stopping 
>>> when we reached a raised brick pillar. The two taller ones at either end,
>>> marking neigbours' boundaries and the two highest, sentinels of the front gate, 
>>> were agreed safety zones. You had to be standing on one of these four and stock still, 
>>> when a car drew parallel with you. If caught on a section between the pillars, even on either
>>> of the two intermediary low pillars, you lost. Otherwise it was a game of constant motion. Keeping the Bendigo blues at bay. Estimating approaching car speeds, risky running, brinkmanship in the afternoo
>>> n.
>>> 
>>> Lucan Street, down from the Bendigo Base Hospital, 
>>> our Grandparents' place, Dad's parents. Elm tree lined. 
>>> Two cars, three at a pinch, nosed to the gutter between trunks. 
>>> Raked up fallen elm leaves ignited right there on the road
>>> at the base of trees. Smoke winding up bark. 
>>> Trimmed roses either side of the curling concrete path 
>>> to the fly-screened front porch where milk, bread 
>>> and later, meals-on-wheels were door-delivered. 
>>> Enter through one half of the glazed double front door, 
>>> proceed across carpeted hallway towards the kitchen door, 
>>> see the carved cuckoo clock on the wall. A box of carpet bowls, 
>>> Henselite, on a mahogany hallstand. Turn right, bathroom 
>>> of scalds ahead, now left, through spare bedroom to sleep-out. 
>>> Place of wooden wonders. Trains, skittles, Bobs game. 
>>> Like billiards for midgets. Set up Bobs in dining room. 
>>> First get brown car rug from Grandma. Spread it out, 
>>> pattern-side down on the dining table. Place Bobs set at far end
>>> of table. Unfold the Bobs wings. Using wooden cue as ruler, 
>>> mark with white chalk the shooting line. Lean over, 
>>> take cue-aim at Tom Bowler-sized wooden black ball. 
>>> Propel it at the kitty, a golden ball, hoping to ping it 
>>> into a high scoring arched hole, preferably 
>>> with a loud thwack on the backboard. 
>>> 
>>> Outside, Nicky, black and white border collie in her large square dog enclosure. 
>>> Reach over the top and tickle-pat the top of her head and she'll almost hum
>>> with patient enjoyment. Remove your hand eventually to Nicky's consternation. 
>>> Walk on cracked concrete by Grandma's fernery, past the sandpit, past the tomato patch, 
>>> the length of the full-sized cricket pitch where Uncle Charlie got head-bopped 
>>> when he played a leave, forgetting the only keeper was a fast-rebounding concrete wall.
>>> An axe-softened chopping block in front of the woodshed in the far corner.
>>> Turn back - mind the woodchips - now pumpkins on your left, cross 
>>> the grassy driveway to the chookshed. Raise first one, then the other, 
>>> hinged wooden flap, checking for a warm egg in straw. 
>>> With or without egg, continue across verge, under apricot tree. Listen. Maybe there will be
>>> glasses chinking next door over the high creeper-saturated concrete fence. The Michelsons.
>>> Buick drivers. Party people. Climb, if you feel like it, the apricot tree, grab a quick look over the top. There's the door. The overgrown outhouse entrance, Grandpa once told you, 
>>> to the wartime tunnel leading under their house and all the way under this house 
>>> to a cellar in the old malthouse on the other side.
>>> 
>>> Bendigo, City with Go, slogan on the new cardboard milk cartons. 
>>> Huh, no go, said Dan, no CITY, said me. But it was a place. 
>>> 
>>> bw
>>> 11.12.13
>> 
> 

Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/

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Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn’s 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
 
            Lorine Niedecker