Place at the Table & Nomad

NovPAD 2024 • Days 17 & 18

This month’s theme: “Where I Am: Poems of Place”

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11/17 • Place at the Table

If you are what you eat then perhaps it’s clear
by now that some tables aren’t spread for a feast
but convenience—prepackaged wafers appear
like blistered boils on grape juice sores, no yeast
to coax your timid soul near. If living bread
and wine increase the table’s welcome then dead
conventions and sere formalistic tension
show we’ve missed the invitation’s intention.

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This is a rispetto (“respect” in Italian). The rispetto can be built in two ways: one is as two quatrains of iambic tetrameter—8 syllables with 4 unstressed syllables alternating with 4 stressed syllables. The other is the one I chose: 8 hendecasyllabic (11 syllable) lines. Both versions have generally used an ABABCCDD rhyme scheme.

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11/18 • Nomad

Image © 2018 Mark Rico

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We wander through the shrouded wood
between unfolding fate and now
into the dreams of childhood

where groans are oft misunderstood
as portents of the breaking bough.
We wander through the shrouded wood

and carry candles for the good
of those who hope to pass somehow
into the dreams of childhood

intact despite the likelihood
of broken heart. We’re learning how
to wander through the shrouded wood

more softly, mindful that we should
have stepped more gently, not just plowed
into the dreams of childhood

to smother youth. Here lately stood
our fathers, candles in the cloud
and wandered through the shrouded wood
into the dreams of childhood.

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This is a villanelle. You can read Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas as a famous example. In short, it’s composed of 5 tercets in an A/B/A rhyme scheme and a closing quatrain using A/B/A/A. The 1st and 3rd lines of the opening tercet alternate to repeat throughout the poem as a refrain¹ and comprise the closing couplet. I’ve taken some slight liberties with the first line refrain in two stanzas.

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1. This is what the villanelle rhyme scheme looks like broken down:

A(1) / b / A(2)
—
a / b / A(1)
—
a / b / A(2)
—
a / b / A(1)
—
a / b / A(2)
—
a / b / A(1) / A(2)