free-verse17 lines

Petit, the Poet

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,

Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel -

Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens -

But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,

Ballades by the score with the same old thought:

The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;

And what is love but a rose that fades?

Life all around me here in the village:

Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,

Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -

All in the loom, and oh what patterns!

Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers -

Blind to all of it all my life long.

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,

While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?