written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Friday 18 December 2020

Palindromic poem

Well readers. It was quite a challenging topic this week. I had a notebook on the coffee table and kept jotting down ideas and the odd line. No doubt you get the gist of what a palindrome is by now. It is generally a single word, or indeed a combination of words that read the same forwards as they do backwards... The combination of words is the most difficult. However it seems that in poetry it is the ability for the piece to able to be read forwards and back again, making sense.

Confused? I was - that is why it took so long to write something that made sense. I realised that some simple joining words, although fine one way, just did not make any sense when I read the line backwards. Anyway through trial and error I came up with a simple, short piece.


You will note that the strategic use of punctuation and the moving of the sentences to a different position seems to work, whilst keeping the reverse order of the piece and (hopefully) still making some sense....so here goes...

                                                  Palindrome
                                       Understand! Sometimes there is nature - 
                             Gently winds blow nearby as 
                    Floating clouds overhead
          Following rivers evermore. 
Why, it is destiny!

Destiny-is it? Why? 
          Evermore rivers following 
                    Overhead clouds floating, 
                              As nearby, blow winds gently. 
                                        Nature is there, sometimes - understand?

Happy palindrome week! Thanks for reading, Kath.

4 comments:

Adele said...

Great job Kathleen and I love the concrete form of the poem.

Steve Rowland said...

Yes, elegant and eloquent Kath ;-)

Kate Eggleston-W said...

Really enjoyed th Kathleen,
Not an easy task.

Amber Molloy said...

Lovely.