A Lai Poem

Permanence Works Out

When change makes you sweat

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Permanence sweats too –
planks until, like you,
it drops
Time’s arms stressed to go,
muscles bulked for New.
Past stops,
breaks for awe of view –
clouds absorbed in blue,
Light’s copse.

©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2021

Thank you to two Medium writers whose works inspired this poem, Thomas Plummer and Bridget Webber.

You Change or You Die

Technique to Help You Let Go of the Past and Claim Future Happiness

Thank you also to the team at Literary Impulse — Nachi Keta, Somsubhra Banerjee, Priyanka Srivastava, and Elisabeth Khan — for challenging my poetic muscles with a new form, the lai.

The lai is a nine-line poem or stanza that uses an “a” and “b” rhyme following this pattern: aabaabaab. The lines with an “a” rhyme use five syllables; the “b” rhyme lines have two syllables.

You can read more about Literary Impulse’s challenge here. So many wondrous — albeit lesser-known — poetic formats to choose from!

Let’s work out together, dearest readers. Much gratitude and more love.

©Jenine