Dawn Thoughts – June 20, 2014 | Bastet and Sekhmet's Library

Last August 9th 2013, Sahm did a poetry prompt on We Drink Because We’re Poets asking us to create our own form. This was my contribution. Someone commented on it yesterday, and it was an odd comment, but it brought the post back to mind.

Thursday Poetry Prompt #15: Invent a Form!

My response was this:

Well, I don’t know if this already exists or not, It’s 4 quatrains…with an added fifth Haiku type 5 syllable line at the end of each quatrain similar to the Haiku “cutting phrase”, and a fifth quatrain, at the end of the poem, in free verse.

The rhyming pattern is particular: aabbc aabbc aabbc aabbc abcd, but the first and third quatrains rhyme on the last word – the second and the fourth quatrain rhyme on the first word, “the cutting phrase and the last quatrain have no rhymes – the last quatrain is completely in free verse.

Unless someone can say differently, I’ll call this The Group Effect…in honor of the Group that’s been stimulating me so much.

Of Fig Leaves

Together one summer day,
Through the country we wound our way,
We joked and I took photographs,
A pleasant morn and oh the laughs,
A memory for winter’s cold.

I stopped beside an old fig tree,
By the path it stood so green, whilst
Taking lots of close-ups we ‘rengaed’,
Making comments as I worked …
In jaunty bawdy rhyme.

We talked about writing a blog
How it’d be good to clear the fog
Of illogical stories told,
Passed as history, but just fool’s gold.
Philosophizing.

Asking why the fig interested me, I replied,
Masking my glee:
Biblical verse has made me giggle for
Quizzical questions, they sometimes pose, like
The nature of fig leaves.

White sap from fig leaves
Burnt your skin last summer,
We imagined
Fig leaves on our ‘private parts’!