This piece o verse dates back to circa January 2008. I thought ‘d repost since one of our fellow NitLetters informed me that he was experiencing the real estate siege described here. Apart from a couple of trochees and the occasional anapest imbedded in prepositional phrases, the meter more-or-less attempts to follow a 4-stress, iambic pattern. The rhyme scheme may appear bizarre, but the irregular appearance of end rhymes were intentionally designed to depict a sense of dislocation.
Losing My Place
Mere rent receipts belonged to me,
in my own home a refugee,
though no force occupied our town.
The agent stated real command;
she clicked her heels on hardwood floors
while rifling closets, slamming doors.
A warm salute, an offered hand
for live ones, not the tenant --
not trespassing, but still present --
so very inconveniently,
as that front elm’s effrontery
defies its peeling bark to stand.
I loved the thickness of its trunk
and how its leaves held back the wind
that felt the touch of hope in its crown.
Oh, how I wish I still lived there,
back in that old and scruffy chair,
its angle bent like no man’s land.
(Evicting rage, despair would flee.)
With books, I used to mark the page
with flowers that I pressed and saved
from gardens I recall and crave --
no doubt by now they’re plowed and paved,
or like an unkempt lawn, mowed down.
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