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Friday, December 01, 2017

Poetry Sisters Write Lai

Another year of writing poetry with my sisters is coming to a close. The challenge this month was to write poems about hope, light or peace in the form of the Lai.

The Lai is a French syllabic verse form consisting of one or more stanza of nine lines with two rhymes, though the rhyme can vary from stanza to stanza. Here are features of the form.
  • 9 lines.
  • Rhyme scheme is a-a-b-a-a-b-a-a-b.
  • Lines ending with rhyme a are five syllables in length.
  • Lines ending with rhyme b are two syllables in length.
I wrote a few poems about hope and peace and they were all really depressing. I gave up and stopped writing for a while. Last night I brainstormed a bunch of light topics and came up with stars, the Northern lights, fire, and daylight savings time. After this, I wrote several lists of rhyming words and then just tried to make something work. Here's what I came up with.

The Perseids
They wait on midnight
close round the campsite
no sound
the sky in their sight
no bright city light
to drown
the meteors bright
hot streaks glowing white
fall down

Crowning a Fairy
Orange embers glow bright
root fae to the site
spellbound
Warmed by heat and light
Earth’s cold losing bite
unbound
The queen of the night
the flames her birthright
is crowned

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below. 
I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Mary Lee at A Year of Reading. Happy poetry Friday friends.