Written July 7, 2025
Prompt: Write a poem with an underlying pulse or sense of meter (Meter Lab 1)
There, like fog atop a town, the clouds drift back
and forth. See it? A kind of lunar waltz with no
tempo and no tones, dancing with no tones,
a kind of lunar waltz. But maybe
somehow when the clouds drift back
and forth, short and long, thick and thin,
they hear their own alluring beats
and shed their lonesome wispy tails
back and forth
left and right
like fog atop
a town.
Inspirations and Comments
This was one of the poems I wrote for a language arts curriculum, which asked that I explore some different rhythmic pulses and meters in a new creation. This doesn’t exactly mean you have to include complex feet like iambs and trochees in the poem, the prompt simply required me to create a sense of “pulse” for the reader, perhaps by alternating between some rhythmic words or repeating a phrase or two. So that’s exactly what I did. The main pulse in this poem is generated by the words back and forth, which quite literally go back and forth as the clouds drift across the metaphorical moon.
I also repeat a couple of other words and phrases in this poem, where necessary, to enhance the waltz-like feel of the verse. For example, in the third line, we have: “tempo and no tones, dancing with no tones, / a kind of lunar waltz.” The repetition of the words no tones adds to the dance aesthetic that is being cultivated in this portion. Then, the enjambment immediately after “lunar waltz” picks the meter back up again, and the cycling of back and forth bring the beat back to the poem. All of these elements give Lunar Waltz a kind of trancelike, meditative feel, and I thought it was an interesting experience to get to write a poem with a beat, rather than a rhyme scheme.
Incidentally, this poem was written just prior to the July-August 2025 Familiar Location 2 Excursion, but the poem makes no mention of this excursion whatsoever, which is probably for the better. Instead, it draws its main inspiration from the enchanting scene of gray clouds drifting back and forth in front of a gray-spotted moon, especially as viewed late at night from a cozy window. In fact, I have a photo depicting that exact scene as my desktop wallpaper right now on my laptop.