Flambeau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flambeau

(a quadrille)

 

 

I don't want to write poems

fiddle while Rome's monde nouveau

becomes a flambeau.

They're a medicine-show elixir

a too-loose wrapping

on a fountaining vein.

 

But I have nothing else

as Arcadia burns

but this glittering salt

to seed rain

on a grassfire wind.

 

 

 July 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Sacred Glimmers

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

dVerse Poets

Quadrille #156

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arcadia is a region in Greece, historically designated as the home of the god Pan, and synonymous with an unspoiled, pastoral wilderness. (Many towns across the world have been named after this spot, usually--tho not intentionally--ironically. I live not far from Arcadia, Oklahoma, a self-conscious tourist trap on Route 66 near an eponymous manmade lake. So far, it has not burned down.)

 

 

 

Images: Torch, 2008, © Wu Guanzhong    Fair Use

Media photo of grassfire, Beaver County, Oklahoma 2022   via internet  Fair Use

 

Love Among The Thistles

Love Among the Thistles

Uncover the hours of the furled artichoke;

nautilus leaves hide the prickle they stroke.

Bring the soft brush of locust lips.

Peel the thorns from nape to hips.

Unpuzzle the thistle that lives

in the deep amethyst heart;

soft choke at the stem

where it all comes apart.

 ~October 2012

Posted  for    real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: The Quatrain, continued

Kerry asks us to continue to work in the quatrain form, and rattles the cage a bit by introducing two variants from Chinese poetry. I have strung together a mongrel beast of Western rhyme and meter (aabb couplets, then abxb) crossed with the Chinese Jueju form, a counted-word quatrain intended to create a mood, often erotic, where each line of the quatrain is either five words, or seven words. I did one quatrain of each.

Header Image: Artichokes at Campo de Fiori, by stijn, on flick'r

Footer image: Sicilian Violetta Artichoke, by In Praise of Sardines, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License