Even Prompter

Memories

Memories

These echoes of the past,
a personal history,
in variegated stream of snapshots lost,

memory lets them pass
through eyes that know their myst’ry
and a mind that knows both reason and cost.

A face, a smile, a word,
a moment perched on the brink,
the endless cavalcade of time succeeds.

Events seen and things heard,
randomly picked, in they sink,
to surface when happenstance sews the seed.


Line count: 12
Form: Kerf
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 23 2022
Prompt: Kerf (12 lines made up of 4 tercets, syllable count 6/7/10 per line for each tercet, rhyme scheme abc abc dec dec).
Notes: I found this a particularly hard form to use, not because of the rhyming or syllable counting, but because of the awkwardness of that third line being almost double the length of the first two. It seems that the number of syllables might almost have been chosen to interfere with any pattern of rhythm established early. And my poetry depends, even when free verse, essentially upon flow and rhythm (so it’s not really free verse at all, but that’s another discussion). The net result is that I’m not happy with what I’ve written up there but I can’t afford the time needed to get it exactly right (and I’m not even sure that’s possible). My apologies, therefore, but I’ll try harder next time.