It is a peculiarity of writing that the word you confidently rejected yesterday, today is suddenly perfect. Nothing has changed in the line—it is you who perceive it anew.

A line that succeeds on its own may not succeed in a verse, and so a verse in a poem, a poem in a collection, and a collection in a tradition. Context is everything—for it determines everything.

Whilst the individual verse idea for the first direction of the “Mist from the Mountains” sketch appeals to me, the multi-stanza idea is developing beautifully, creating unique poetic opportunities of its own: internal rhyme, rhyme scattered across stanzas, subtle and overt literal and visual alliteration—all the joys of lyric poetry! I, therefore, lean heavily toward the multi-stanza idea for the poem’s first direction, but will develop the individual verse concept nonetheless—who knows what other opportunities I may encounter in the process!