Renewal & A Poem of Loving for Good Friends

Thank you Susie Cameron. Because of your brilliant villanelle from several weeks ago, I've been playing with that very constrained form and feeling safe and warm in its grip - this is the first of two.

RENEWAL

A life entwined in pains that are long past

A hugging terror grips my clouded mind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Afraid to speak my eyes avoid the mast

Where captain of my ship yells life is kind

A life entwined in pains that are long past

My frightened heart beats hard and much too fast

Always I feel like I’m so far behind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Why does the part inside feel so miscast?

My role in life will it I ever find?

A life entwined in pains that are long past

I wake up from a dream and am aghast

Your heart’s locked in a drawer a deaf girl signed

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Open the drawer for risk I am now tasked

It’s time, I say, my life is not defined

A life entwined in pains that are long past

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

A POEM OF LOVING FOR GOOD FRIENDS

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

With histories that time’s heart always cheers

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

Through incidents that could have fostered hate

Forgiving hearts were bound by many years

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Births and deaths all wandered through the gate

Familial bonds were sealed by flowing tears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

They traveled far and not each found a mate

Loneliness through connections disappears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Old secrets lurk beneath and sometimes bate

And pain and anger’s head it sometimes rears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

When old friends will show up with wine so late

The pain and anger fades along with fears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

On Writing

The classroom assignment: Write a villanelle. So I did, and the professor liked it so much, she asked if she could use it in her instructional materials. I was honored. Here it is.

Inside my head I know what I must say

But language trips and falls and stumbles blind.

My words emerge and blink and lose their way.

To take this pen and slash the fog away,

To put on paper what is in my mind --

Inside my head I know what I must say.

A phrase can dance and spin, a child at play,

Or crash about, malformed and misaligned.

My words emerge and blink and lose their way.

My thoughts can soar like hawks at dawn's first ray,

They seek the sun and leave dull earth behind.

Inside my head I know what I must say.

I want to write these thoughts without delay,

But, God! The perfect words are hard to find.

My words emerge and blink and lose their way.

Some words can shine and shimmer bright as day,

Illuminate the dark for humankind.

Inside my head I know what I must say;

My words emerge and blink and lose their way.

copyright Susan Cameron, 1998