Variations on a Ballade

Google image

 

 

Last night, I couldn't sleep a wink--

reaction to your call

      that she was over with the drink,

      the pizza, sons, and all

      her helplessness (the gall!)

has kept my spirit from its rest,

so that today, I walk the hall

and wish 'twere I who'd been your guest.

 

Why do I worry so, you ask.

"I've told you you're the one.

You think my protestations mask

     some silly, willy-nilly fun

     to keep your psyche quite undone?

     I told you I love you the best;

now of your jealousy be done,

for only you shall be my guest." 

 

(For this ballade to end up whole,

it must include another verse.

     French forms--factitious--must cajole

     both form and content into terse

     but lucid stanzas. I immerse

my jealousy in words to wrest

catharsis from a chafing curse.

Aha! 'Tis I who've been the guest.)

 

For seven years this poem's lain

unfinished in my writer's chest,

but time has exorcized the pain:

you married her--SHE'S been your guest.

 

PL - from variations, 1994

Haiku/ senryu-- actual, found and fancy

                Son Eric's backyard last summer. His photo.

 

 

calico sniffing

the cherries and pear

in the new kitchen rug

~~~

 

bermuda

growing better

in my flower beds

[from Janet Carson, AR Living, June '14]

~~~

 

a former rent house

now only an old picture--

the new school building

~~~

 

shorn by funnel cloud

it will never again shade

the old man's milk cow

~~~

 

working the crossword

a mosquito grazes

the top of my pen

~~~

 

male cardinal

on a limb

above the red truck

~~~

 

dusk

stomping the roach-shaped leaf

into the carpet

~~~

 

thirty minutes

after 'lights out'

thinking of another poem

[written 10 years ago to the date]

~~~

~~~

c 2015 Pat Laster dba lovepat press

 

Eric's photo of a day lily against his shed

 

 

 

 



 



A post-reunion Etheree-patterned poem

Here is the Couch sibling--Thurman-- missing from the July 4 reunion. Let's say he might be bowing in sorrow that he was too ill to make the long trip from Pasadena, CA.
NOTE FROM THURMAN: I'm singing to entertain customers.  My buddy,
Don Cadogan, to the left.  A nurse friend at right.  This was on a Superbowl
Party event.  2013.  I was raising the roof!


 

 

This poem written July 7, while resting from the delightful, 3-event reunion held over the July 4th weekend.

 

I'm

eating

leftover

purple hull peas,

potato salad,

tomatoes, grape salad

and watermelon, apple

and coconut cream pies--all left

in my refrigerator after

the main meal of the family reunion.
PL -