Friday, February 3, 2017

Poetry Friday: A Villanelle Too Brief to be Believed

Brevity is the soul of wit, they say....

or perhaps it's only that too little time can make one punchy.

Whatever the case, when I realized The Poetry Sisters challenge was due this week---AND that the task was to compose a villanelle on the theme of the shortness of time---I, being actually VERY short of time---briefly (ha!) lost my mind and wrote the first thing that popped into my small brain.

(Or perhaps February always makes me get silly.)

In either case, it's no languid, genteel flow of words here today, folks---this poem is mercifully quick, and defectively concise.



A Villanelle Too Brief to be Believed

To rhyme "brevity"
requires no skill
but high levity;

forget grandevity--
it's years off your life; a pill
to rhyme brevity

with something shorter than longevity.
See? It’s no thrill.
But high levity

aside— yippee!—
wit is much more chill
to rhyme. Brevity,

to an alarming degree,
may be fast-acting, like NyQuil,
But high levity?

A truly jackrabbity
beast. Yet—what an ever so long-lasting thrill
to rhyme brevity
with high levity!

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

I'm hoping my Poetry Sisters have put up something far more poignant.

Liz
Tanita
Laura
Kelly
Tricia

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Penny Parker Klostermann at A Penny and Her Jots.