More forms...

Today I'm going to dive, yet again, into a poetic form. It's a simple form called a villanelle and it uses repeated lines to its effect. The first and third lines are repeated at the ends of stanzas and again as the last two lines of the poem. The middle lines of each stanza rhyme with each other, and the other lines rhyme as shown.

The most familiar poem that uses this form is Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night".

While I have no delusions of being Dylan Thomas, I have written a few villanelles. This one was written while reading an old magazine in a doctor's waiting room. The magazine had an article about a group of people who bought tickets right after the first moonwalk to the first tourist trip to the moon. Evidently, the tickets are still valid, (or they were when the magazine was published) and I jotted down this ode to patience and optimism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Waiting Room


Rapture waits in time I’ve loaned
to festivals in a “maybe” past.
My trip to the moon has been postponed.

I sigh in spectrums under-toned,
with passions held in color-fast
while rapture waits in time I’ve loaned

with interest. I am unatoned
until I surrender up, at last.
My trip to the moon; it’s been postponed.

Tranquil in the seconds owned
with minutes counted, softly passed
in rapture. I have time I’ve loaned

to one collecting fees, disowned
by passing title. Yet all’s surpassed:
my trip to the moon has been postponed.

In patience, which has been condoned,
I hold my tickets, business-classed.
While rapture waits in time I’ve loaned.
And my trip to the moon has been postponed.

13 Jan 2004