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Roots

I learned about some trees, when they’re cut down
Will sprout a new fine shoot that’s left to grow
And thrives because of strong roots still below.

These roots keep plants above from growing brown
Because they store the water they bestow.
I learned about these trees when they’re cut down
Will sprout a new fine shoot that’s left to grow.

This precious wealth of underlying crown,
Unseen, yet sending life robust and slow,
Makes new tree stretch and garden riches flow.
I learned about some trees, when they’re cut down
Will sprout a new fine shoot that’s left to grow
And thrives because of strong roots still below.

(There were so many ways this prompt could have been taken, especially around Thanksgiving, but I kept thinking about a ministry I heard about the other month: FMNR, Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. This organization helps third world farmers nurture the shoots from trees that have been cut for field space. If they regrow new saplings using the old root system, the tree has a better chance of survival than a brand new sapling. In addition to this, the old root system retains more water which is spread out under the planted field, and so the field is more drought resistant. It’s all kind of amazing, and I’m just beginning to wrap my brain around it. You can read more about it here: https://fmnrhub.com.au.

As for the poetry form, I chose an English Madrigal (created by Chaucer). It’s iambic pentameter with a tercet, quatrain, and sestet. The three lines in the first stanza are reused throughout the poem.)

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Tightrope

The connecting places have been secured,
The rope between is tight, but supple.
I just need to step out on it.

One end is held by God, family, and friends;
The other end is a printed book.
The connecting places have been secured.

The years stretch back to that starting place,
So much life has happened, so much still will;
The rope between is tight, but supple.

So today as my book leaps into the world,
I know I must follow it along that rope—
I just need to step out on it.

(The prompt today, Tightrope, seemed about right for the state of my mind with my book release. I feel like I’m balancing precariously, leaning between the thrill and the unknown. On the blurb for today’s prompt our poetry host mentioned that she’d never really thought about the fact that a tightrope has two connection points, and that opened up more thoughts for me. What are the connecting points for this tightrope I’m now on?

As I browsed various poetry forms, I was caught by the Cascade, a poem that repeats the lines of the first stanza throughout the poem. It can be much more complex than what I’ve done, but I kept it simple. I think it communicates some of this journey I’ve been on!)

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Heart-to-Heart

A thousand times we had a heart-to-heart;
I used my art of words to cast light
On the way your word and deed brought sorrow,
Each mental blow causing further blight.

You heard me and you understood my grief!
To my relief you answered my call;
You asked forgiveness and sought to amend,
And our friendship survived that hard squall.

As I said, a thousand times we conversed—
I rehearsed every line in my mind—
But in truth, that’s the only place we spoke;
I dared not provoke a heart so blind.

(Sorry for the slightly depressing theme today! Did you ever have a situation like this one? Today I had an idea to go with this prompt, heart-to-heart, but I still wanted to use a form, so I found one that gave me parameters, but let me (try) to communicate my thought. This is the Toddaid, another Welsh poetry form that reminds me a little of the Dechnad Cummaisc I tried with the poem “Network.”

See if you can catch this one. In each quatrain, lines 1 & 3 have 10 syllables. Lines 2 & 4 have nine syllables and the same end rhyme. The last syllable of line 1 rhymes with a syllable within line 2, and the last syllable of line 3 rhymes with a syllable within line 4.)

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Around the Table

Whether dinner is meatloaf or stew,
Or roast chicken a fork can cut through,
Or a salad of greens fresh with dew,
In a basement or room with a view:
The cuisine and the view don’t much matter
As long as I’m ‘round table with you.

(One thing I realized today is that the content of my poems depends a lot on the form I decide to use. I have the day’s prompt, and sometimes I have a thought that I want to follow, but if I go to a certain form, my theme may completely change before I’m through, or if I don’t have a thought ahead, the form creates my “story.” That was certainly the case for this poem today, a “Hir a Thoddaid.” It’s a Welsh form, six lines. Lines 1-4 and 6 end with the same rhyme and have nine syllables. Line 5 is 10 syllables and there’s a rhyme toward the end of the line that’s repeated toward the beginning of the sixth line. Mine is the short /a/ in “matter” and “as.”)

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Different Language

Spanish in Guadalajara
Leans heavily on vowels in speech,
So when learning, one must beseech
The speakers to not overdraw
Vowels allowed by unwritten law.
It’s true the effect of this sound
Creates a most musical round,
So though tricky for ear to hear
Each word to make meaning more clear,
The language’s beauties abound.

(On Saturday we watched the young daughters of friends and I almost wrote a poem about the “different language” of a one-year-old. Then I was going to write about different language structures and how these structures affect understanding things in our lives, but that got too complex. So I didn’t get far with this yesterday. This afternoon I pulled up my source for different poetry forms and I found the “Decima,” a ten line poem that is used musically in Latin America. Each line has eight syllables and the lines follow this rhyme scheme: ABBAACCDDC

The form and the fact that it’s related to music made me think of our experience with Spanish while living in Guadalajara. And so you get this poem 😊 .)

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Form Friday: Cento

The light of the bright world dies with the dying sun;
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,
(But) there are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy,
(For) all the shining lights in the heavens [God] will darken over you.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget.

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Line 1: “The night has a thousand eyes,” Francis William Bourdillon
Line 2: “The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth
Line 3: “Fire and Ice,” Robert Frost
Line 4: Hamlet, William Shakespeare (parentheses and ellipsis added)
Line 5: Ezekiel 32:8a (parentheses and bracketed word added)
Lines 6 & 7: “Recessional,” Rudyard Kipling

(Last Friday, November 18, was Form Friday, and our prompt options were to do a Cento or a Blackout poem. Both are known as “found” poems because they use material from other sources. I decided to try a Cento, which borrows lines or phrases from other works and creates a new poem from them. I started with line 5–I read that this morning and it struck me as a fabulous concept for a story, and if not that, an interesting line for a poem. Then I went digging around for some other random lines that I remembered from poems, wrote them down, fooled around with them, and created something with a little sense. Beneath my poem is a list of my sources.

The only line I couldn’t figure out how to fit in was another bit of Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice, and it’s so lovely that I’ll put it here: “Look, how the floor of heaven/Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.” Now THAT’S how I want to write.)

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Harmony

Entwined, our voices sound around the room,
Each tone a counter note of harmony,
Some high, some low, some light, some tinged with gloom,
But each important to the company.

The tendency to place a pedestal
And set one part or other on its top,
While pushing others out or under all,
Is habit that is difficult to stop.

Yet if we do not fight against this foe,
Delib’rately acknowledging the need
For every voice and talent high and low,
We’ll miss the beauty centered in our creed.

We’ll lose the chance to see the way our Lord
Can use our body whole to touch the world.

(The word “harmony” naturally made me think of music, and so I thought I’d work with a Shakespearean sonnet. I remember trying to help tenth grade students write these–they seemed so hard! I don’t like them when they’re too ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, but they don’t have to be. Not sure if I succeeded with this one, but I do enjoy the practice.)

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Network

My neighbor said birds like birdbaths
As much as seeds,
So in the midst of summer rays
The blaze recedes

From dim shadow under our tree,
Where water waits,
Fresh and cool, calling parched birds.
Mute words translate

Through airy avian network—
Cardinal, jay,
Mockingbird, robin, and thrasher—
All whir their way.

(Here’s a cool poetry form: the Dechnad Cummaisc–please don’t ask me to pronounce this!. It’s an Irish style made up of quatrains. In each quatrain, the first and third lines have eight syllables. The second and fourth have four syllables and an end rhyme. The final word of line three rhymes with the middle of line four.)

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Twins

“Are you sisters?”
“No,” we say,
“But you’re not alone.
We’re often asked that.”

I glance at my friend
Born across the continent;
She has a couple inches on me,
I have more years, and pounds.

But there’s something in our poise,
Our perspective,
Our way of engaging others,
That creates, I think,
The allusion to family.

Perhaps not twins,
But even twins
Are more dissimilar
​​​​​​​Than friends of the soul.

(Last Tuesday these phrases kept running through my head with this prompt, so I just went with another free verse. Sometimes that’s just what works!)