Voices In My Head
The Visitor
A Poem in the Form of a Malayan Pantoum
I watch you glide across the calm cold waters,
the dew of early morning lingers between my toes;
still dazed, my eyes betray me in this misty haze,
your ghostly silhouette a wistful echo.
The dew of early morning lingers between my toes,
I shelter in the quiet of the lake’s sanctuary;
your ghostly silhouette a wistful echo,
I awake with a jolt from my haunted dreams.
I shelter in the quiet of the lake’s sanctuary,
silence lures me in with its eerie tendrils;
I awake with a jolt from my haunted dreams,
my gnarled mind holds the only remnant of you.
Silence lures me in with its eerie tendrils,
still dazed, my eyes betray me in this misty haze;
reality asserts itself with reflections of long ago,
I watch you glide across the calm cold waters.
The Visitor was written in the form of a Malayan pantoum where lines two and four of each stanza repeat as lines one and three of the following stanza (ABCD | BEDF | EGFH | GCHA), with the goal for the whole poem to circle back to the beginning. It was my first pantoum. For the purists out there, I chose not to include a rhyming sequence, well because, I just don’t rhyme! I hope to include this form in future work, and encourage others to experiment with different forms of poetry.
Thank you for taking the time to read my poem. Without you, my voice would be a soft whisper just floating in the air.
If you enjoyed The Visitor, you may also be interested in reading Bioluminescence:
and A Missed Note Here and There:
