Rayuela

[busker]

It's not a vain hope, Knot.  I think you're right in that my free verse is often a draft and I just want to move on to the next poem.  But it's also that what come out and gets put on the page first thing is the most truthful version and altering it significantly means tossing out some of that truth, if that makes sense.  That'smy mental block to extensive editing.  In the old days I tried to write in strict self-imposed forms and the results, mostly, were terrible.

Thanks to all, this one is now going back into the laboratory.

I don’t think this one should go back to the library at all
What is the “truth” that you refer to above? To me, it’s in the pauses.
It is my observation that poetry coming from within, particularly “inspired” poetry such as what you write, emerges with a specific cadence. Tinker with that, and something is lost. Of course, in the process of writing it out, some of the intended rhythm can be made ugly by words that don’t fit, and editing then becomes a case of finding suitable substitutes.
The other kind of poetry, the Parnassian (to paraphrase Hopkins) is written differently. There, the poem doesn’t have an inner soul, an inner rhythm, but it has a lot of technical beauty. Much of Ted Kooser’s poetry is of that kind. Editing has a much bigger role to play in such poems.
IMO the rewrites to your poem above lose the original cadences.
You can still improve on the poem, I’m sure, but over a time period of weeks to months to even years.  Not days.