As I walk
by cricketjeff on July 17, 2008. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
I must walk beside my mistress, on the way to see the moon.
There’s a road beside her castle in the sky.
When you’ve crossed the bridge of crystal you’ll be there so very soon
But be sure to ring ahead she’s rather shy.
In the castle we are crossing live the maidens of the night,
Who must roam across the milky way to give the stars their light.
My mistress is a supplicant who’ll ask the moon for love,
She has fallen for a poet’s rhyming words.
So she’s dreamed the magic roadway to her goddess up above
And she walks beside me singing to the birds.
When you’ve fallen for a poet there’s so little you can do,
Just dream that you can ask the moon to intercede for you.
Now she’s sitting with her goddess, sipping nectar, drinking wine
And she’s asking that her poet falls for her.
Then the goddess tells her kindly just to look out for a sign
That the rhymer has a heart he can confer.
As I eat the magic grasses that are washed by lunar springs
I feel tingling in my backbone where I’m growing mighty wings.
Now my mistress mounts me calmly and I fly her back to bed,
Where her hair is spread like laughter on the sheet.
There’s the song of stars and moonlets softly ringing in her head
And a feeling that her mission is complete,
And she wakes up in the morning to a sonnet and a rose,
That were left there by a poet with a lovesong to compose.
Author notes
The picture is a contest prompt and is from
http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs30/300W/f/2008/175/9/6/
96d02c863eec8231fb384e2a02652eb7.jpg
Just a brief note on form, on a suggestion from Sue Cardwell I have separated
the couplets from my ababcc sixaines here to see if that makes the verse appear
less intimidating, I would welcome comments on that. I decided I didn’t like
it, I have now indented the shorter lines, see how that works.
The meter is based on what I call “extended ballad measure” (alternating iambic
heptameter/iambic pentameter) save that each line starts with an anapaest
rather than an iamb and the couplets consist of a pair of heptameteric lines.
I’ve used the sixaines a couple of times lately (I borrowed them from
Shakespeare ) but the exact meter is new to me so comments on that too are
especially welcome
English