*Mary Miller’s Broken Villanelle
She lay curled up on her susceptible side
Aware that the hand that Signed the Paper filled a city
Shackle-married to a ghost of war and manly pride
Her brother’s love of bourbon not quietly set aside
Mountains of gray-green rock imagination and pity
She lay curled up upon her side to hide
Independence sold gladly for lust and feminine pride
The lavender edged pond trailing hidden paws of kitties
Shackle-Married to a ghost of war and manly pride
A fine suddenness of perception nearly compromised- near lost inside
Her place in the bed dust-filled and gritty
She lay curled up on her not as susceptible side
Aware alert to a polished dying of the firelight beside
Her youth and a dimly realized truth sacrificed for war’s false pretty
Still married to a ghost of war and manly pride?
Along a Rim of World high and far above the tide
One and then another great pile of bodies scuttling behind the jetty
She lay curled up, contemplating, waiting, deciding
Not long perhaps if ever married to a ghost of war and manly pride
Free to float
Free
Beyond the jetty
*A found poem in the villanelle style created incorporating some of the words of Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas. This poem is written about the protagonist of a novel I’m currently working on set in Lake Arrowhead, CA and London, England during World War II.
©Rachel “Lori” Pohlman, Twin Peaks, CA, July 2013
LakeArrowheadLadyWriter 