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 # 14 I will call Short Time.
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 # 14
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.
Short Time
It is such an uphill struggle to climb
When you wake up and find
Because I’m living on short time.
In my youth so naive and sublime
Thoughts of my immortality defined
It is such an uphill struggle to climb
It’s a dirty rotten shame and a crime
That when you get to know your mind
Because I’m living on short time.
Once I lived easy on long time.
Now the road less traveled is so far behind
It is such an uphill struggle to climb
Now that I’m older and past my prime
I know the ticking o the clock is so unkind
Because I’m living on short time
Moving forward with a laugh and a rhyme
The end of the road I plan to redesign
It is such an uphill struggle to climb
Because I’m living on short time.
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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