journalread

My favourite springtime poem, published in Girl’s Got Rhythm: Lamb

Lamb

At the start of spring sunshine
in May, a clamour occurs,
an ignominious din.

She sees the lambs born
on a cool summer morn, stumble;
bumble, late in the daylight.

The sun rises at four,
red, ruby-gold glows up high
and christens the new-born babes.

It comes round, it goes around
it returns on this morning
of joy, of hope, of new lives.

Polly Stretton © 2012

For those interested in form in poetry, this is a Triversen which is described as:

The rhythm of normal speech, employing 1 to 4 strong stresses per line.

Stanzaic  Written in any number of tercets. Each tercet is one sentence, a kind of natural breath.

Grammatical  There should be 3 lines. L1 is a statement of fact or observation, L2 and L3 should set the tone, imply a condition or associated idea, or carry a metaphor for the original statement.

Alliteration contributes to stress.

Other ‘rules’ found on the internet:

Triversen:

Each stanza equals one sentence.

Each sentence/stanza breaks into 3 lines (each line is a separate phrase in the sentence).

There is a variable foot of 2-4 beats per line.

The poem as a whole should add up to 18 lines (or 6 stanzas). As you’ll see, I did not heed this rule, the poem seemed complete to me after just 4 stanzas 🙂