Sermons and Seeds

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The dVerse poetry prompt today is all about the pantoum poetry form. As explained by Gina on the dVerse Poetry blog, the pantoum is a series of interwoven quatrains and rhyming couplets. I won’t elaborate further than that (‘cuz I’d just confuse myself), but you can read Gina’s description of the form here.

Below is my attempt at such a poem.

pantoum1

When bored with a sermon of a Sunday morn,

To the graveyard next door I would go.

Among the gravestones I’d play and roam;

Decorum of death I did blithely not know.

 

To the graveyard next door I would go

To escape stale air and the pastor’s drone.

Decorum of death I did blithely not know;

Off I would dance over rotting bones.

 

To escape stale air and the pastor’s drone,

I’d blow dandelion puffballs to free the seeds.

Off they would dance over rotting bones,

Then land between tombstones and weeds.

 

I’d blow dandelion puffballs to free the seeds

Among the gravestones. I’d play and roam,

Then land between tombstones and weeds,

When bored with a sermon of a Sunday morn.

pantoum2

41 thoughts on “Sermons and Seeds”

  6. Smiling I am! From your comment before the post (‘cuz I’d just confuse myself) to the entire write. LOVE the line about the pastor’s drone of a sermon. I think probably everyone can relate to that at some time. And most especially seeing / hearing it through a 7 year old’s mind. Also love the idea of the dandelion seeds and the dancing…all that freedom as opposed to the dead lying locked in their tombs below the ground, and those parishioners still sitting locked by adulthood expectations in their pews listing to the sermon drone! Good one!

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  7. Really loved the theme and much of the images. Very nice.

    Feedback questions and thoughts:

    (Stanza 1 & 2) “Decorum of death I did not know.” What is that? Decorum of death, I get. But it seems you finished the sentence around a rhyme instead of flow. Why did you NOT know it?

    (Stanza 3) Why “once more”?

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    • Thanks for the feedback. As a child playing in a cemetery, I did not think about or understand that it might not be “appropriate” to run around the gravestones and play. That’s the “did not know” part, but I can see how that line is stilted.

      The “once more” is because I picked the puffballs from the dandelion weeds that grew among the tombstones, and so when I blew the seeds, they would land back among tombstones and weeds. I’ll think about how I might make that clearer.

      Thank you for commenting.

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  8. I really liked this Maggie. I can see you finding sanctuary from a droning sermon among the tombstones. When I was young, I loved playing with my friends in a old, old graveyard on our street. We knew nothing of decorum when it came to respecting the dead, it was just a great big place to play hide and seek, and sometimes, hard ball. We got chased a lot… 🙂

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    • I’m glad you liked it. The cemetery where I played is the one pictured in the accompanying photo. It is a “pioneer” cemetery, and the last qualifying person died sometime in the ’70’s, I believe. It was quite large, too, and there was lots of room to run. The county maintained it, and sometimes the grass grew knee high before they came by to mow. Hide and seek was definitely part of the “play list.” Fun times!

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      • Ahh, I hate Barbies in all other situations. This one had fallen from a floor above and nobody collected it. Kind of felt sorry for her. And she’s naked. And she is still right there in this garden and has been for two years now. Now seeing her makes me grin just because I took these photos.

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  15. A graveyard may not be everyone’s idea of a playground or a place to dance (over rotting bones), but it is the ideal place to find dandelions! Your pantoum is perfectly formed, Maggie.

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  17. As a kid, I used to ride my bicycle through a nearby cemetery. There was a small pond with beautiful weeping willows. I found it a place of peace and I would stop and read the stones and wonder about their lives. I could feel their spirits in an unexplained way.

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