Judged-Edited- sliced . diced and munged back into shape

[r.magnay]

Pretty good Marty, couple of bits I stumbled over but I reckon by the time you have read it a few times you will iron them out! Good onya!

[Maureen K Clifford]

What Zondrae said Marty, plus commas - '' '' etc will make a huge difference to it, but it is a ripper - well done.

Cheers

Maureen

[Neville Briggs]

That sounds pretty good to me Marty.

I didn't find any stresses that seemed out of place.
And I argue that scansion ( the analysis of metre ) is not a scientific mathematical formula, and it is not necessary for an exact plodding sameness of the metric structure all the way through. The bush poetry comp judges usually demand that sameness for written items, but it just isn't necessary in poetic writing. Although it is a good idea to get it " correct " first so you can learn how to vary it with some control.

I have two points though. In stanza 4 line 2. You're stands for you are. I think you need the possessive here which is your, no apostrophe.
And stanza 5 line 2. aint stands for are not, so needs to be ain't. with an apostrophe.

I don't think punctuation is necessarily a matter of right and wrong. What I do, is read out loud, where I make a slight pause, I put a comma. Where I think that the end of a sentence falls, I put a full stop, followed by a capital for a new sentence. It shouldn't get much more complicated than that.

I'm afraid I reckon that if a comma makes the difference between first and second in a poetry competition , then poetry competitions are a waste of time and effort.

Of course you won't take any notice of me, you'll listen to a red-headed sheila, but not me.

[Maureen K Clifford]

I didn't know Julia wrote poetry as well Neville - we are truly blessed to have such a PM. We do live in the lucky country don't we?

[r.magnay]

.....if todays results are anything to go by we might not have to worry about Juliar much longer....Kev might get his old job back...

[Maureen K Clifford]

Well he is such a nice looking bloke I don't think that would be hard to take - just IMO of course and he never seemed to have the wardrobe malfunctions that Julia did.

[Neville Briggs]

You just keep out of the rain up there Maureen.

[Zondrae]

Goodonya Marty,

As I thought, the first time I heard you recite, you are a great story teller. You don't seem to have wasted many words. Every adjective has been thought of and the rhyming pattern is a real challenge. This one will be a keeper and I'm sure you will keep on polishing it 'til it shines like a new moon.

I will now and go and write 100 lines... 'you must spend more time on writing poetry'
.. but this would defeat it's purpose I suppose. ... (I'll go to my room again.)

[Trisha Patterson]

Hi Marty,
Nice story-line! Seems you have been inspired by your Tamworth trip!
Well done.
Trisha

[Zondrae]

...but one thing.

I was waiting for someone else to point to it.

Line 4, Stanza 1. ... what is with the 'ing'. It is not in the rhyming pattern or the metric pattern and isn't it wrong to have a soft ending to a line; three things that need to be addressed. (...Please advise if Ms Glenny gives a private lesson on same....)

if you simply have 'to cope' it may be better... or have you already done the fix?