In spite of persistent nor’easters, spring is on its way in Pennsylvania. Woo hoo!
As much as I love winter, I also like the weather to make up its mind once in a while … so as lion-lamb-don’t-know-what-I-am March begins, I think it’s time to move on. Spring poetry, here we come.
Today’s poem (included in my Lenten challenge) was actually written during an unseasonable thaw in February, after I’d been walking through the neighborhood. I kept getting sidetracked by strangely-shaped piles of snow along the roadside, like little white sculptures. That, plus the warm, fragrant air, the glittering streams of melted snow, and the peculiar mood I was in came together to form a single line:
My heart, like March, begins its melt…
And the poem grew from there.
In keeping with my recent interest in formalism, “Home-Soil” pays attention to rhyme, meter, and other aspects of sound. In fact, you may notice the influence of Pushkin: two quatrains in iambic tetrameter. Though instead of alternating rhymes with both feminine and masculine endings, it features all-masculine enclosed rhymes: abba cddc.
Simple and straightforward — but that’s the point.
I tried to keep the language as simple as possible, with minimal multisyllabic words. On the other hand, it’s not entirely “plain English,” either, because I’ve slipped in a number of nonstandard compound words. That would be the influence of German on my poetry. 😉
Home-Soil
My heart, like March, begins its melt
as snowpiles line the back road home —
I lose the cold white need to roam
as earth-scents rise, and time’s unfelt.
I turn my steps: the snowpiles stand
reminding me of winter’s storms —
but streams lead on, and springlight warms,
until my home-soil fills my hand.
You know, I like how the abba scheme creates a “return” that reflects the theme. It reminds me that form can have meaning just as much as content.
What do you think? Do you prefer free verse or formalism, and why?
