An English Exercise: John Ashbury's The Chateau Hardware

The exercise was to take a poem from John Ashbury called The Chateau Hardware and take the end of each line and add to it with your own thoughts and words. I will include his poem in italics and then write my own lines in regular font.

It was always November there. The farms forever draped in late autumn's gray death. They
Were a kind of precinct; a certain control held over those who remained by the fear that
Had been exercised. The little birds sat silent in hope of the seeds that
Used to collect along the fence. As though they knew;
It was the great 'as though,' the how the day went, after the day of
The excursions of the police intensified.
As I pursued my bodily functions, wanting release and solitude.
Neither fire nor water, could cleanse my unclean heart. Nor could the
Vibrating to the distant pinch felt within my soul be settled.
And turning out the way I am, turning out to greet you. But you're not there, you're gone forever.