[Hilary Biehl]

Each version has things to recommend it, Max, but I still find myself coming back to the first one. I am trying to figure out why I find it more compelling than the others.

One thing is there's a great sense of movement in the first version. We start off with the flag pole clanking, of course, as well as the N scrambling from work and the children maybe hiding or playing. Even in the desolate second stanza, things are still moving - the trash can has been "wind-toppled" and is still "rumbling" over the hopscotch marks which are "scuffed" and "fading" (a familiar and specific image I was sorry to lose in the revision), the wall is "peeling," etc. In the third version the trash can is just lying there ...

There's also a kind of charming informality and simplicity to the language, and the N's lively dialogue with him or herself ("Where were they hiding?" etc). I think if you kept more of that lightness in the first stanza of your rewrite, the second might hit harder. ("Horns toot" isn't doing it for me.)

I'm not saying that version is perfect or that you shouldn't rewrite it. I know how it is when you write a poem that doesn't do quite what you meant it to, whatever its virtues may have been. One can't - shouldn't - settle for something that is actively misleading or contrary to one's intent. But maybe there is a way to bring some of those virtues into a revision that honors your intent. Or maybe I just want to have it all.