National Poetry Day: April 11, 2015

NaPoWriMo Prompt: Today, rather than being casual, I challenge you to get rather classically formal, and compose a poem in Sapphics. These are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

Well, I certainly can count syllables, so my poem qualifies on that count (pun intended). However, as for the trochees and dactyls, I gave up. Lazy modern poet...

Lesvos

That day I first saw Sappho’s island of birth, 

Greek sun rose hot even at dawn’s blue hour.

Scrub covered hills rolled

outside the dust caked car window. I drove on,

clutch crabby and grumbling like an old woman

stumbling on gravel.

To the sea I sped, past signs I couldn’t read.

On to the Aegean where Sappho had first

penned poems of love.

I should have studied some verses to recite,

but my throat ran dry. Words flew away, cinders

orange against blue.