week 90 ~ the wind rustles through the aspen

the wind rustles through the aspen
as waves softly lap at the shore
and right now there is nothing more
than this I would wish to happen
my circumstances don’t often
allow me time to pause with grace
while clocks run down and others race
to keep up to the flow of time
and so I linger in sublime
wonder to be here in this place

About these ads

Written by mairmusic

July 9, 2010 at 1:16 pm

Posted in decima, July

Tagged with aspen, island, place, poetry, shore, time, waves, wind

12 Responses

Subscribe to comments with RSS.

have fun by lingering in sublime…
loved your poem!

Jingle

July 11, 2010 at 2:34 pm

Reply
- Thanks, Jingle!
  
  mairmusic
  
  July 11, 2010 at 3:25 pm
  
  Reply
Now THAT’s a good vacation post. Glad you are back!

almondjoycie

July 11, 2010 at 7:41 pm

Reply
- Thanks– I am!
  
  mairmusic
  
  July 11, 2010 at 8:56 pm
  
  Reply
It’s nice to be able to “linger in sublime wonder”, and you write it so well. Always a treat to come here. The photos are superb.
Thanks for your visits and comments. :)

Tracy H

tracyhsays

July 12, 2010 at 12:36 am

Reply
- thanks, Tracy!
  
  mairmusic
  
  July 12, 2010 at 7:42 am
  
  Reply
I love the decima. You’re right, the rhyme scheme is certainly unusual! The half-rhyme threw me off at first, but the ebb and flow of the metre is very well suited to describing the sea and the elements.

mudwords

July 13, 2010 at 7:41 pm

Reply
- Thanks! I sometimes call it “sonnet light” because it’s an abba and cddc, but with an extra ac in the middle.
  
  mairmusic
  
  July 13, 2010 at 9:22 pm
  
  Reply
Beautiful. Not long ago I was floating on a raft on a lake beside some shoreline aspens. This poem took me there again. Thanks!

NotATameLion

July 14, 2010 at 10:44 pm

Reply
- Thanks for reading!
  
  mairmusic
  
  July 14, 2010 at 11:04 pm
  
  Reply
just awesome.

trisha

October 12, 2010 at 11:06 am

Reply
- it was an awesome time–thanks!
  
  mairmusic
  
  October 12, 2010 at 9:55 pm
  
  Reply

Who am I?

A mandolinist, a bandolimist, a writer, a photographer, a wannabe Brasileira. Check my webpage for information on my music and my sometimes life in Rio.

What is this?

I have made a plan for this year, beginning on my birthday- October 16, 2008 - to keep creativity in focus in my daily life, spontaneously, reflectively, and with intention, by setting in motion several series of small events. Every day I will take a photo and record a thought. Every week I will write a sonnet and photograph myself in the context of my life. And I will post it all here. Maybe not every day, but I will maintain the schedule of each series and post as often as I can. I think this will be fun, may be interesting, and will result in a considered year of small moments stolen from a busy life and strung together to make... who knows? At this point it's just a plan. Wish me luck~ here goes!

Email Subscription

“Year 2″ begins– so what’s changing?

I have completed a year of this blog-- amazing! And I've decided to continue on, because this document has become a treasured reflective spot in my life. There will be some changes for "Year 2," beginning on my birthday, October 16, 2009. I'll expand the options for my weekly poem beyond sonnet to add some other forms-- rondeau or triolet, possibly villanelle. I just added the decima in late January. And in August I am adding the pantoum. Definitions will appear below as the forms enter this page. I'll continue to post a photo daily, but I may post several pictures taken on one day over the course of a week if I have an interesting series. I may even post an old photo if I'm writing about something I'm thinking back to. I'll continue to have fun with this project & I hope you will too. Thanks for reading!

“Year 3″

For Year 3 I tried some changes, including other people in the self-portraits that accompany my poems, adding "Musical Sundays" to post mp3s of my music, but these petered out in a few months. This is simply a place for my daily thoughts & photos, and weekly poems in the forms I love. Onward...!

The material on these pages belongs to me

Everything published here was created especially for this project and is owned and copyright by me. When the project is complete I may do something concrete with some of it. So enjoy, but please, if you want to share more than a quote or two send people here, don't displace my work from its context or authorship.

What’s a sonnet?

A sonnet is a 14-line iambic pentameter poem with a unique and characteristic rhyme scheme. They have been written in Europe and England for centuries, and usually combine viewpoint and reflection in a personal yet universal way. I call mine blank-verse sonnets and try for a simple casual scan that observes yet obscures the form. Inspirations are the American sonnets of e. e. cummings and Edna "Vince" Millay.

What’s a villanelle?

A villanelle is an early French form with 19 lines using only 2 rhymes, traditionally broken into 6 verses. It's kind of obsessive, with lines 1 & 3 repeating alternately, the 4th time as lines 18 & 19. The lines can be any length, but don't seem to vary within a poem, and subjects include love, loss and challenge. Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath all wrote them, and from the minute I typed villanelle in "Year 2 begins" I was itching to try it out because I've never written one. My first appear in Weeks 53 & 56. I've run some verses together, as many modern writers have done, for continuity and a cleaner line.

What’s a rondeau?

A rondeau is a form of medieval poetry that pre-dates the villanelle and also uses only 2 rhymes. The earliest come from an 8-line song form with 2 lines of music that repeat-- line 1 as 4 & 7, and line 2 as 8, rhyming the rest in a characteristic pattern. The result is a sturdy little poem that makes its point thoughtfully, and less obsessively than the villanelle, perhaps because the generating couplet is unrhymed, and the lines don't need to be the same length, just able to be sung or spoken in the same amount of time. The first ones appear in weeks 55 & 57. Sometimes the poetic form, sans music, is called a triolet.

What’s a decima?

A decima is an early 10-line Spanish poetic form, with a distinct break after the first 4. It uses an 8-syllable line and has an unusual but characteristic rhyme scheme. It's also a 19th-century form of improvised Cuban song so I thought it would work well in this blog format. My first appear in weeks 66 & 69.

What’s a pantoum?

A Malaysian form from the 15th century-- how exotic! It's a series of quatrains, w/ lines 2 & 4 repeating as lines 1 & 3 in the next. The last quatrain also uses lines 1 & 3 from the first quatrain, with the first line ending the poem. So every line is used twice. My first one is week 95.

Search poems by type

sonnet

villanelle

decima

rondeau

pantoum

Posts with music attached

archive: past posts

Search for words and phrases

Blog Stats

44,827 hits

Celebrating a Year