2 villanelles and a resolution

I remember thinking up a Haiku last year while on a run, something about the sea and the fullness of love. I edited it my head on subsequent runs, using my pace to count syllables 5 - 7 - 5. And then one day I wrote it down and it shined in front of me, a poem, not perfect, but made.

After Wales with Jacob I was determined to write about the experience as a whole, and decided poetry would work. I decided to challenge myself with a villanelle, remembering how I hadn't been utterly satisfied with one I wrote as an exercise for a prac crit class in 2016. The Wales villanelle involved me making lists of words that rhyme with 'Wales' and 'recall'. Eventually it wasn't perfect, but if I am to start on the project I want to start on, I need to settle for less than perfection and practice patience.

I'm going to make it a point this year to write (and read) more poetry. Partly because I want to cultivate a habit and turn the phrases that sometimes drift into my head into cohesive (although not all poems are) creations and also because I am beginning to doubt my ability to finish a novel during term time, when reading about artefacts and theory is taking up most of my reading-time, and I refuse to relinquish my literary identity.

(Also partly because I am inspired by this instagram account and it haikus (for former lovers) which illuminate modern american woman dating life with so much wit and humour.)

Hopefully I'll produce a poem a week. Anyway. Here are two villanelles, two years apart:

Villanelle
2016

It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide
Though I always thought it’d happen by falling up the stairs
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

As a child, it was the distant rumble of brontide,
A flash of lightning that through me tears
It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide

In school I learnt of genocide
A million, million deaths. Not mine, but theirs.
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

In her bedroom, I sit beside
My grandmother, and we say our prayers.
It might be slow as starvation or quick as a landslide.

A million conversations, but this one sticks: ‘Abide
With me. Be my guide. Lead me to the unknown wheres.’
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

There is that odd moment when earth and heaven collide
A peace that passeth all understanding as your world goes up in flares.
It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide.
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

Villanelle 

2018

When I say, 'Remember Wales?'

I do not ask for mere recall.

I mean that love and hope prevail.

Dwell on our God of fine details -

fifty pence fares and blackberries small -

when I say, 'Remember Wales?'

Dwell on our God who doubt curtails -

extinguished by stars and mountains tall -

and trust that love and hope prevail.

If comes a time when love grows stale

let's to those days determined crawl

when I say, 'remember Wales?'

Though on the summit storms assail

I know your hand prevents my fall,

I know our love, our hope, prevails.

When we have walked the final trail

we'll know, God's truth in us unveiled

we'll know, and we'll remember Wales.

In us, God's love and hope prevail.