….to let go of.
Today we go behind the lines of “All Things`”.
I believe that this is the most technical poem that I have written or published to date.
There are five verses of four lines.(5 quatrains….I think?, but don’t quote me!!).
Four of the verses (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th) have a 6/6/6/7 syllable scheme, diverting to a dramatic interlude in 4/5/4/5 in the fourth verse.
It is unusually for me, planned and deliberate and has a musical quality.
In essence, I tried to make a responsorial piece with-
“All things you can’t hold onto”
becoming the congregational response to the liturgical litany of, yes, you guessed it, things you can’t hold onto to.
The fourth verse still retains a call and response, but more in the form of a work or a marching song, as it suddenly shortens.
It also urges the addressee to “Hold on, Hold on”, to themselves, or, until better times arise, having lost whatever it is that they cannot keep, in an almost commanding way.
The verse further implores the poet themselves maybe or the audience to wait until the-
“Grief is Song”.
I like to look at the alchemical nature of things, how pain or the transient nature of existence can produce something better, even if unforeseen or unfortunate in it’s current state.
“Pain brand new” was a phrase that popped into my head, as did the succeeding two lines of light finding the protagonist.
The poem ends as what I guess is a rallying cry against the non permanent peculiarities of life -and finds in luminescence, in lunar light, in nature and in the non-consumerist, -some kind of stability or salvation-
“All things you can hold onto”
*I chose the pun here as a tsavorite is a dark green garnet and a rare gemstone, unlike the many stones of a beach, like the one pictured here in Nice, France, where I was fortunate enough to witness and capture a night being turned briefly into day, by a September storm. There is also a cathedral in that town by a Tsar, so seemed appropriate, as awful puns go.
Algo.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 