Thank you Jayne, Catherine, Lance and Susan. Here's another crack at the final stanza that works in the sheep as suggested. Improved?

The shot is lovely, lambs and sheep
Still gambol in my camera's sweep;
I promise, there's no cause to weep,
For I can crop this in my sleep.

Hi Roger,

Good, but I miss the Frostian repetition of the last two lines.

Thanks, Susan. Maybe:

The shot is lovely, lambs and sheep
Still gambol in my camera's sweep;
And I can crop this in my sleep,
And I can crop this in my sleep.

Oh, so do I - miss the repetition I mean. And where did the sheep come from? Totally rhyme-driven, I think. What has happened now is that the little scenario that the poem showed me has disappeared.

It was like this: our inept photographer is showing someone (his light o' love, perhaps) a picture that he has taken of her. When she shows distress at his ineptitude, he blusters - then tries to tell her he can make it better...

Could you try something like:

The shot is lovely - dark and deep - (if that's not too cheeky!)
Ignore the sore thumb - do not weep,
For I can crop this in my sleep (x2)

Do Merkins use the expression "sore thumb" for an obvious intrusion? I do - and I bet Tessa does, too.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stick_...e_a_sore_thumb

Thanks, Ann. I may take that. Catherine's thoughts definitely struck me as valid, but I lacked the skill to execute, so the sheep may have to go.

I have no idea what these contests are/will explore-- here's one that might fit -- I originally titled it Natural Selection but Out of the Picture works too



Looking through old photos,
I found the one of all the boys
in brown, lined up in rows
before the barracks in a town
in France. My father never talked
about the war or purple hearts,
but always watched old movies
Friday nights where frail men
died, the fittest men survived.
I watched them too though never
really knew what they went through.

I took that photo to the funeral
home for all to see. At calling hours
some men came Dad knew. They
laughed together, cried some,
shared collective memory.

In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

The first iconic photograph of war
was Roger Fenton’s moonscape from Crimea.
We see a path and plain and little more;
no dead nor signs of death, or life, appear.

We know, as shocked Victorians could not:
the barren, shell-shorn place resembles Mars,
but for a galaxy of large round shot
that yawns to the horizon, thick as stars.

For all the emptiness his camera showed,
for years we've argued and researched the claim
some cannonballs were set out on the road,
as if that made the wasteland seem less tame.

At last, we've proved they were. Could one contrive
a better metaphor? The conscience palls
at what we’ve learned since 1855
of war and misplaced focus, which is . . . Balls.


Frank

Frank, intriguing interpretation of the title and intriguing topic.
Shell-shorn? Shell-torn?
Galaxy? The shot is shining or twinkling? 'Rows and rows' or something?
I took 'cannon-shot' at first as a measurement of range. Would 'big round shot' be a possibility?
You have 'ball' in the penultimate stanza. Is this to prepare for the punch-word in the last line? If not, maybe something like 'placed some iron on the road' or 'placed that iron on the road'.
Maybe 'science proves' as you have' showed' in the first line of S2?
'calls' seems a bit rhyme-driven and not quite sure what it means here.
Any possibility of a link to the actual photo?

The title should now link to Erroll Morris's exhaustive but fascinating essay on the photograph. Added 'shocked' in another place - took your advice on 'proved,' which I'd been debating. Thanks.

Editing back in, to say the scales have also fallen from my eyes regarding cannon-shot.

Frank

I think the changes are effective and it runs well. Can't see why Tessa shouldn't find it her cuo of Yorkshire. Let's hope for a right and left for you and Roger.