Posted tagged ‘poem about growing up’

Triolets (Waltzing Not-Mathilda)

March 8, 2012

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Here are two triolets!  A triolet is a medieval form that is the subject of a wonderful article by Samuel Peralta and Gay Reiser Cannon for dVerse Poets Pub Form For All.  It is a form involving repeating lines.  (I think of it as a short waltz of a villanelle, but I’m not sure where the 1-2-3 comes from except that the first line is repeated three times.)

Below are my two draft attempts;  they use some of the same lines.  I personally think the second is better (though maybe I can work them into a pair.)

Starting to Unwind (Beginning Yoga)

I found that I’d not breathed for many years
and that my heart was lodged in my right-hand back.

I’d recycled air from way back when and fears
I found that I’d not breathed for many years

to anyone–not sympathetic ears,
nor those stopped up against a hurting fact

I’d found.  I had not breathed for many years;
my heart was lodged in my right-hand back.


Who knows?

I found that I’d not breathed since who knows when–
a cherry blossom spring, I wore white gloves
whose seams ran up my hand,  then back again.

I found that I’d not breathed since–  Who knows when
the heart bursts seams when it finds a pen
to hold it, when it leashes its wild loves?    

I found that I’d not breathed since who knows when,
a cherry blossom spring–I wore white gloves. 

All rights reserved. 

Brain Teeming? Try Rhyme!

May 11, 2010

Locust Leaves

What to do when your brain is teeming too much to think straight!  Write a poem, especially a rhyming poem.

A rhyme offers a wonderful thread away from fretful pre-occupations;  it can take you somewhere quite magical.   So, in the stress of mid-week, even though I no longer have the excuse of National Poetry Month, I am posting a draft poem written this evening, made up of rhyming quatrains.  (I don’t think it qualifies as magical, but it was a fun exercise.)

Behind the Locust

She tiptoed under the locust trees,
their shade bared earth, her shorts bared knees.
Their bark was rough, as rough as you please,
though the wood is soft in locust trees.

Though the wood is soft, the thorns are not;
sticks fall down, and leaves on top.
She tiptoed through the thorny plot
of earth and stem and leaf and rot.

The trunk was thin but she was small
and stood at angles–so, and so,
shifting from tip to the other toe,
to hide from all who’d come and go.

No one was looking, but still she hid,
looking herself at all they did.
She watched them walking, watched them sit,
keeping close the tree’s close fit.

What mystery to be lost and found
beneath the slightly rustling sound
of leaves like grapes; inside, the pound
of a heart that’s longing to be grown.