Posted tagged ‘poems about beginning yoga’

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. 

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