PAPER: An Ae Freislighe on the Eve of Our 2nd Anniversary

For Carlos Hernandez

I shall try a new form, I think. First: because it will amuse my beloved; second: because forms are hard–and because a level-up challenge seems particularly appropriate at this moment–this very moment–when I am at my ease, and he is sitting perpendicular from me on this L-shaped couch, racing time to finish the last chapters of his novel; third, because I want to.

Here are the rules to the Ae Freislighe form, (pronounced  “ay fresh-lee”) from which I have copied a little below.

• Quatrain stanzas (4-line stanzas)
• 7 syllables per line
• Lines 1 and 3 rhyme together, but they rhyme as three syllables (xxa)
• Lines 2 and 4 rhyme together as two syllables (xb)
• The final syllable, word, or line of the entire poem should be the same as the entire poem begins (the poetic term for this is dunadh)
• Poem can be as concise as one stanza and scale out as far as a poet wishes to push it

PAPER: Ae Freislighe

Autumn is our cityscape
Last-gasp roses, gutter leaf
Monster mask and witty jape
Hot wind, sly rainfall’s mischief

You, near, lounging: ankles crossed
Haircut I gave you grown out
Brows drawn, in prose-tangles lost
Coffee enough to drown doubt

Book: this pressure in your chest
Book: released and billowing
Book: your labor and your quest
Book: high-burning, slow-glowing

Soon I’ll read it page to page
Then–done, turned in, time for us
Work outlives us, age to age
Long after we’ve gone to dust

Tender, our shared history
Over the rest, gently drape
This scrim of dim mystery
Autumn is our cityscape