LESSON

The prompt for Sunday Scribblings is LESSON.

This may well be a lesson for me!  This is a poem I wrote several years ago, and I thought at the time that I had invented a new form of rhyme.  Knowing, however, that multitudinous rhyme forms exist, it is now hard for me to think that this is original!  So, if you are more informed than I am, please tell me about it.  That will be the lesson TO me.

TO POETS LEST THEY 

FAIL TO SAVE IT

Sing not of poison oak or sticker.

The sunlit meadow plays no tricks.

Hear note of lark or bee and sing it.

Ignore the broken wing and sting.

Reject vast emptiness of ocean.

Its rosy shells are better shown.

Man's poisoned air may choke and stifle.

Sing only of impassioned flights.

For gloomy word be reprimanded.

Don't let it slip that man is damned.

This bent brown child convulsed with rickets?

Try gentler views, more wisely risked.

Avert your eyes from floorless chasm.

Erect for skulls a smiling mask.

Though you have probably detected my rhyme strategy by now, I will pretend that this is a lesson FROM me and TO you:  

The couplets have regular four beat lines. The first line ends with one word with two syllables. The second condenses the two syllables into one word using the same consonants and, if necessary, omitting a silent vowel.  For instance, the title drops the "e" which it needed complete the two-syllable sound. In the first verse, one of the two "i"s is dropped. 

The rhyme, however, actually depends upon sounds, not spelling.  In the 3rd verse, "ocean" and "shown" are an example of this, as are "chasm" and "mask".

Lesson over!  Please turn to Sunday Scribblings to see other responses to this prompt. Do so by clicking on link.

Action

Anna = Action! From the time she was small, Anna danced, climbed, balanced, twirled and jumped from high places. In the photo above, she was just getting to her room at our 2007 family reunion at Asilomar State Park. For her, this was the quickest route.

Here, in 2011, is Anna, resident of New York City area, actress, musician, model, music teacher, and still climbing!

Normal Day?

THE DAY OF DESTRUCTION

The day of destruction dawns like any day

-birds at the feeder, crumbs upon the table-

          "We're almost of toaster bread"she says.

        They hear no murmur of subterranean stresses

       to cause new rifts to gape, to split wide open

                      when earth's crust slips or an inadvertent word

releases tsunamis of ocean or tears         

The day of destruction dawns like any day.

Perhaps the undetected clot may migrate.

              "I'll buy another loaf on my way home."

And who knows? Maybe tis is not the day

the world will end. It still might be a day

like any other day.                  

Quest

ABC Wednesday Round 9

In Search of Eldorado

Our faith in gold, and pearl, and fountains
where youth and manhood are renewed
Was lost in challenging these mountains
of pathless chasms, boulders strewed
to crush our spirits, slow our way,
ice by night and fire by day.

We thought we would have been, by now,
stretched languidly in fragrant grass.
Who could foresee this brooding brow
of overhanging cliff? We pass
against the precipice; the blood
of clinging fingers marks our way
precarious, day after day
threatened by avalanche and flood.

Nor have we found the streets of gold,
but dust, and thorn, and flies that bite,
and eyes that circle us at night,
and we are growing old.

Bruised, we scientists retreat.
The stones of paradise have torn our feet.

Not Here Yet - I Hope

Requiem for Earth (A Sonnet)

Down the slanting pathway of all the years
No memory now of battles lost or won
There were soft rains that fell, or maybe tears
That burned away beneath the blazing sun.

There was a view of earthrise on the moon,
That tender living ball of shining blue
That stirred the hearts of they who all too soon
Would act from need or greed, their poisons spew.

Now down the slanting pathway of the years,
Degreee by small degree, all hope has flown
From rare rich planet, bright among the stars
No longer in the thrall of greed or fears.
Now, here where once a bright blue planet shone
is torrid Venus or an airless Mars.

Phyllis Sterling (Granny) Smith

M is for Memories

M is for Memories

Requiem for Earth
(a sonnet)

Down the slanting pathway of all the years
No memory now of battles lost or won
There were soft rains that fell, or maybe tears
That burned away beneath the blazing sun.

There was a view of earthrise on the moon,
That tender living ball of shining blue
That stirred the hearts of they who all too soon
Would act from need or greed, their poisons spew.

Now down the slanting pathway of the years,
Degree by small degree, all hope has flown
From rare rich planet, bright among the stars
No longer in the thrall of greed or fears.
Now, here where once a bright blue planet shone
is torrid Venus or an airless Mars.

Phyllis (Granny Smith) Sterling Smith October 2011