Patricia M Osborne

 

 

Q – Quatrain

A four-line stanza that can be rhymed or unrhymed (or partly rhymed) (John Dury The Poetry Dictionary)

Q is for my poem,  ‘All Change’ – an even-rhymed quatrain.

All Change

Oblong at first,
hairy and small,
lived on a leaf,
curled in a ball.

Slithered along
in search of food,
to build myself up,
ate all that was good.

Then came the time
to close my eyes,
cocooned in a cover,
quite a long while.

Along came Spring,
told me to wake,
time to push through,
make my escape.

Re-emerged with wings
in soft burnished gold.
transformed in sleep
to a beauty I’m told.

In summer I flit
from flowers to trees,
but the buddleia bush
is the best home for me.

Q – Question

Question – ‘What does Ice Make me Think of?’ was a prompt for a poem. 

 

 

What Does Ice Make Me Think of? 

Ice makes me think of fruit sorbet
and vanilla ice-cream. It reminds
me of Alice Hoffman’s magical Ice Queen.
Heat ice and temperature rises, liquid
forms. Wait a while longer and mist
appears, to blind and burn. Ice
makes me think winter and bitterly cold,
when I want to be warm. How I may slip over
if not alert and have to stay strong.
Ice is wet, cut in blocks like small square bricks
immersed in cold drinks. An Inuit Eskimo
may live in an igloo made from ice and snow.

That’s what ice makes me think of.

***

Before I leave today’s blog I would like to move back to yesterday ‘P’ and the Penta Decima. Corinne Lawrence, a poet, responded to my Penta Decima post and I thought it deserved to be featured rather than tailed on in comments. So here’s Corinne’s response with her poem and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that she’s made a great use of the form in this very moving poem.

From Corinne:

I think the Penta Decima seems to lend itself to an elegiac mood, and I have to say I found it a challenge to write, but very rewarding. The rhyme scheme is quite subtle and understated – nice.

Here’s my Penta Decima, written after a second trip to Grindleford in Derbyshire in August/ September 2017.

 

The Return

The poem is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Gina Bunbury (January 27th 1943 – August 8th 2017)

We might have touched down just yesterday
to the same butterflies, the same bees — the sky
as blue, tea roses still in bloom, the bench free.

Two months, but we might never have been away
from our mini Provence. Only the gunnera
shows the passing of time: brown-edged,

shrivelling, it has shrunk back, giving way
to the river. Water music weeps over stone:
a requiem for summer. Still, as before,

we soak up sunshine, savour the bouquet
of lavender riding warm air, and try not to think
sadly of September, or the week to come.

We both knew, but found it too hard to say:
our last time here was before we heard she’d gone,
making this quite a different sort of day.

***

About Corinne

Corinne is not only a fantastic poet but also a very talented playwright and her stage plays have been performed at Swanwick Writer’s Summer School on more than one occasion. Her poems have been published in Reach Magazine, (Indigo Dreams), Writers’ Forum Magazine, and Writing Magazine. Many of these poems have taken the winning place.

Thank you for commenting on the Penta Decima, Corinne, and allowing me to share your poem.