I was a bit stumped for a subject today. Then I started feeling a bit melancholy about how quickly spring was passing–I can feel melancholy about almost anything, which is one of my great failings. Anyway, I remembered this poem I wrote a few years ago because I wanted to try a villanelle. Here is the Wikipedia definition: A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.
I wrote it just to see if I could. Villanelles are not supposed to tell a story–they are more of a verbal dance. So here it is.
Spring Song
You are gone, but spring has come at last
As it does every year, without remorse,
Smiling harbinger of everything that’s passed.
Fields of yellow flowers, the fierce green of grass,
The sullen river swelling in its course—
You are gone, but spring has come at last.
The black hole in my chest was once so vast
A cavity, it sucked in all light with its force.
Smiling harbinger—of everything that’s passed
Spring sings, in the mockingbird’s pastiche. Fast
And faster, notes pour from the source.
You are gone. But spring has come at last,
Though I would stop it, break the iron cast
Of seasons always changing. There’s no recourse,
Smiling harbinger. Of everything that’s passed
I cannot be forgiving. Life’s too fast
Or, then again, too slow to stay, of course.
You are gone, but spring has come at last,
Searing me with everything that’s passed.
writinghersense 