A Glosa Poem

I’ve been participating in the Poem-a-Day challenge for the month of November. I haven’t written a poem every day, but I’ve written something at least half of the days. I find that I enjoy writing not just from a prompt, but from another poem as a starting place. This has given me a reason to pull out my composition book where I’ve handwritten favorite poems (some that I’ve memorized) to use them to inspire my own poetry. This poem is in the Glosa form. Take one stanza from an existing poem and make each line the last line of a new stanza. I chose a stanza from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Where Go the Boats?

The leaves are all turning
They hang and quiver
For home each heart yearning
Dark brown is the river

The ghost trees now haunt
The hill where we stand
The squirrels chirp their taunt
Golden is the sand.

I’ll follow the water
If we go together
It will not matter
Though it flows along forever.

But if you want no more
Then back o’er the land
Let’s take the path to our door
With trees on either hand.  

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash