I worry so for dear old Bill

I recently decided that, in the interest of seeing the forest for the trees, I should go back and reread my own blog posts "from the beginning." I ran across this bit of verse, originally composed and posted on May 11, 2009:

I worry so for dear old Bill,

So long abed, so very ill,

For if old Bill does not get well,

Then he will die and go too soon

To tell the tale he came to tell

And sing out his appointed tune.

I wrote this as a demonstration of a technique without any real meaning in mind. The idea is that the first three lines establish a rhyme scheme that leads you to anticipate the fourth line ending in a particular way, but then the rhyme scheme unexpectedly shifts and subverts that expectation. As I commented when I reposted the poem in 2013:

If this works as expected, the mental echoes of the unwritten word hell should leave the last two lines in a limbo of ghostly half-existence; the reader reads them but knows that in a parallel universe the poem ended without them.

"Bill" wasn't anyone in particular in 2009 or 2013; it was just a name that rhymed with ill. Now, of course, there is a Bill who is mentioned probably hundreds of times on this blog and who is focused on The Story -- "to tell the tale he came to tell."

When, after his last disappearance but one, Bill reappeared and started commenting here, I sent Leo an email informing him, and he replied that he would check the blog and "see what ole Bill has to say," echoing the "old Bill" language in the poem.

Alternatively, the "Bill" of the poem could be myself, as seen by Bill Wright, who has hinted that I might be hellbound ("it doesn't end ultra positive for everybody, unfortunately") because I'm too lazy to do the work necessary to "tell the tale." (See the comments on "Mighty in writing" and "Gracehopers and Ants in the library" if you missed that drama.)

Or "Bill" could be William Alizio, whose implied "sickliness" is discussed in the post "William Alizio's links to other stories."