A Dawn Pond Pantoum

Another poetic format I previously taught my middle school students, and one I will attempt to write myself today, is the pantoum. A pantoum is a poem with a fixed structure of repetition. Written in two stanzas of four lines each (quatrain), lines 2 and 4 of stanza 1 become lines 1 and 3 of stanza 2.

When I taught this from to my students, and they struggled to find a topic (focus), I suggested that they seek inspiration by simply looking around a room in their house or school, or even out out the window, to try draft a pantoum about what they see.

Like many forms, the level of adherence to structure is totally dependent on how comfortble you are. In the case of my pantoum, I'm going to use two qautarins, thereby employng the following scheme: 1-A, 2-B, 3-A, 4-B; 1-B, 2-C, 3-B, 4-C.

Standing in silence at the pond's bank amidst a tuft of long grass,
the shaggy plume, just below the great bird's slender neck, blows listlessly in the early morning winds.
A pair of geese, goslings in tow, calmly make their way under his gaze and across the glassy surface.
Staring out across the calm waters, the heron's bill points northward, and anew the day begins.

The shaggy plume, just below the great bird's slender neck, blows listlessly in the early morning winds.
Goslings create a cacophony of bleats and honks announcing an intent to follow their paternal guide.
Staring out across the calm waters, the heron's bill points northward, and anew the day begins.
Signaling with his own throaty croak, he takes flight across the water, eventually settling on the far side.

Totemic Tanka Tweet

dashing down the trail
on a misty morning run,
in the trees and long grass
totemic neighbors peer out--
squirrel, rabbit, bird, chipmunk--
"Which, Friend, are you now?"

As entertaining as writing haiku, twit-aiku, run-ku and many other "kus" can be, sometimes I like to mix it up by playing with other forms.

One poetic form related to the haiku is the tanka. Like haiku, the tanka (both are ancient forms of Japanese poetry) follows a suggested syllable "count" for each line, in this case 5-7-5-7-7 (five lines).

Poetry du Jour: Bird Haiku

I reckon you know the drill"--aviary considerations in the traditional haiku format (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables):

Flitting in branches--
moving among leafy shadow,
the bird emerges.

A Robin rests quiet--
beside the ceramic sun,
Eating burnt rice from its palms.

While watching the birds in my backyard (and beyond) it occurs to me time and time again that poetry (although maybe not the lines I necessarily write) is the bes way to communicate a birds behavior.