I got a book on poetic forms to experiment. It was fun, though my results all felt awkward rather than smooth, forced in places. I haven’t figured out how to fix that. Anyway, this poem rose from the memory of an event that happened decades ago when an unhoused man who used to have dinner with us every night drowned.
The form, as the title says, is a pantoum. Per the Poetry Foundation, here’s a definition:
“A Malaysian verse form adapted by French poets and occasionally imitated in English. It comprises a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.”
Photo by Marco Bicca on Unsplash
Pantoum for Ernie
He tumbles and floats downstream toward nirvana.
Chanting college boys row past him unseeing.
On the riverbank slumps his worn-down madonna,
nodding in the needle’s pretense of well-being.
As chanting college boys row past unseeing,
he cooks the white powder, shoots it into his arm.
Nodding in the needle’s pretense of well-being,
too close to water’s edge. The river enfolds him.
He cooks the white powder, shoots it into his arm.
The world blooms warm, at peace. He rocks unthinking,
too close to water’s edge. The river enfolds him,
his wool coat an obstinate anchor, sinking.
The world is cold liquid. Snowmelt rushes him on.
On the riverbank nodding alone, his madonna
wraps herself in her second-hand jacket of down.
He tumbles and floats downstream toward nirvana.
