One Night (edit #2)

[ChristopherSea]

I have no prejudice for or against ing words, with the exception of loving a good fling of any sort. As a gerund it is a word of action, which to me is a good thing in a poem, it's in the moment.

Huddling can be changed to "in a huddle", but that's more words. Huddled for me brings up more "in a doorway" than on a football field.

I'm thinking.

Huddling in this case is an active participle, not a gerund. The reason to avoid it, generally, in your writing is because it is passive voice. You don't see it because you have implied the pronoun and the verb (they, are). The active form would be huddled, but then you couldn't imply the pronoun as it would switch to second person so you would have to write "they huddled". In this case, though I generally prefer active voice, I prefer the economy of "huddling". Of course you abandon this economy in the very next line by including 2 pronouns , one of them the very one you implied so it might not be a bad idea to switch to all active voice to see what happens.

Thanks milo,

huddling
planning their getaway
foregoing small town fireworks

Now it's too many ings for me. I can't lose their without exchanging it for a, no improvement?

huddling
planning their getaway
small town fireworks rejected

maybe

I don't know if you are sticking to your beloved Tanka scheme, but you could change tense:

huddled
they planned their getaway
forewent small town fireworks
dreamed of the shore
of strolling arcades
pre-baby days