echsdoc challenged me to write a sestina. Since this is my first sestina, I am calling it:

So, here's that poem about compost I started last week. I'm not sure if I like it yet.

I saw someone playing electronic Sudoku on the bus this morning. Reminded me of a "Trois-par-Huit" poem I wrote on the subject a year or two ago.

("Trois-par-Huit" -- a made-up modern poetic form I found on ShadowPoetry's list of poetic forms. At one point I was going to try to write one of each kind, just to see if I could... maybe I should take that up again.)

Anyway. My 3-6-9-12-12-9-6-3, aabbbccc poem:

So, yesterday autumnbottom, my friend visiting London (Hiya!) told me about a local story -- a full-grown tomato plant, complete with fruit, growing in a crack of a busy highway there.

This tale of hope and gritty perseverance inspired me to write a poem last night. I tried a new form for me, a villanelle, which is a difficult form to pull off. It's a 19-line poem with the rhyme scheme aba aba aba aba aba abaa, with lines one and three repeating in certain set places throughout the rest of the poem.

I've posted it to the poetry site I go to every so often. Since I'm so proud of myself for writing a villanelle, I'll post it here also. ;-)

I wrote a sonnet I'm happy with.


Cemetery Walk

I pass them by with care, these tiny graves
With marble lambs above a single date.
No range can compass it, no reason sate
A mother's arms, deprived of all she craves.

This spot should stand apart, immune from all
The healthy rudeness of abundant life.
Yet here, a million insects buzzing rife
Where black-clad parents forced their shoulders tall.

Perhaps this is a fitting circumstance:
That seeds should swell to saplings in this sun,
That rust-red vixens teach their kits to run
Beneath this milk-white angel's frozen glance.

But still I turn my gaze and tread with care
To not disturb the shallow dreamers there.