In January, I will explore the style of the Villanelle. This form of poetry has a lot of rules. I am normally a rule-breaker, so I take up the challenge of pirouetting across this restrictive dance floor with a degree of trepidation. Villanelle # 9 I will call Waiting Down the Road.
My first love is poetry. I played with rhythms as a child as a favorite toy, writing line after line and verse upon verse down in a notebook my mama gave me. The words became undecipherable squiggly lines dancing across the page. I remember sitting on my Uncle Harvey’s porch, making up poems only I could read. I learned to write real letters after I started school. That’s when my adventure with poetry started. I found myself in a dance with a fickle dancer. As soon as I got the steps right, the beat changed, and the singer sang a different tune. COVID-19 and retirement have given me the gift of time to explore, study, and capture the essence of poetry, making all its different moved on the page.
The rules I followed writing Villanelle # 9
The rules for creating a Villanelle are simple and straight forward. This style of poetry must have 19 lines and five stanzas. The closing stanza has four lines. Also, line 1 gets repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18. Thus, line 3 gets repeated in lines 9, 15, and 19. There are so many rules and so little time.
Waiting Down the Road.
Routine in the world before a foul wind blowed
Disbursing ciaos, deadly disease, and vicious violence
Still, better things are waiting down the road.
All day long on TV I see talking heads
Tell me I should have faith in their finagled science
Routine in the world before a foul wind blowed
Politicos argue on every news station episode
Manipulating to people like they don’t possess a conscience
Still, better things are waiting down the road
All our trusted institutions about to explode
And our leaders expect us to have patience
Routine in the world before a foul wind blowed
Lies up on lies to process and decode
Fabrications spun with sophisticated eloquence
Still, better things are waiting down the road
We are the people flushed down the commode
Searching for an element of truth and a little guidance
Routine in the world before a foul wind blowed
Still, better things are waiting down the road
Who is Molly Shea?
Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh. To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.
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