For the past three years I’ve devoted November to a serialized work of fiction. I’ve decided this year to write poetry instead. I’m calling it Povember. Today, a rondeau. I’m picking up the theme I somehow started yesterday.
To bear the brunt of your disdain,
A brunt I will not hunt again,
I find myself enchained and grunting
In the sparking darkness, stunting
Under weight and over pain
And ask you, master, plan it plain
To make your claim and stake my pain
Tonight that I might, without hunting,
Bear the brunt.
My gasps will not be grasped in vain,
And quill and leaf shall show the stain
For, were the burden worth the fronting,
You would be the one who’s brunting,
Teaching me to be humane,
To bear the brunt.
Sesquiotica 