Such hopes, defeats, and desperate wants,
The pages set them free.
I never kept a journal once,
All this time— it’s kept me.
Page 20, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
A day, a death. We lose ourselves,
Forgotten won’t confer.
To stay the grim, this pen compels;
We wrote, therefore we were.
Page 19, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
A year’s adage, an age, a youth,
I think, therefore I drown.
What thoughts will settle into truth,
If we don’t write them down?
Page 18, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
But poets die and starve and groan,
To fill an empty space.
This hole inside, I carved alone.
I’ll hold it now with grace.
Page 17, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
‘A lovely compliment.’ said he,
My feather in his hat.
Another thing he stole from me,
Without a caveat.
Page 16, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
Once I’d begun to really doubt,
Eventually I said;
That he would make a poet out
Of anyone he wed.
Page 15, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
I was a poet all along,
These letters must remind.
My muse amused— I am the song.
And choose my own in kind.
Page 14, of “Merry Meet and Merry Part”
© Aimee Wood 2025
A storm is brewing, count the clouds;
Be still— the north wind knows.
What’s coming ripples through the crowds,
And I can hear the crows.
There is a foul odor on the wind, unignorable.
© Aimee Wood 2025
The following is a playful introduction to writing poems in the Common Meter (or Metre or Measure), written in the common meter! Please enjoy, and share where you wish.
My dear adventurers, it’s me!
My name is Aimee Wood.
Today let’s speak of poetry—
The awful and the good.
Specifically I’d like to chat,
About the common poem.
The beat of iambic format,
Is where I’ve made my home.
This cadence and the rhymes within,
Historically well tred—
From Shakespeare to dear Dickinson,
With ease this prose is read.
To memorize we oft prefer,
The power of the rhyme.
From toddler to the theater,
A mind minds best in time.
So let’s dissect the common mete,
We’ll start with the iamb.
Two syllables, a pair, with beat—
Like this, or that, kablam!
Next link your iambs in a row,
Like I am doing now.
Split words if needed, let them flow,
Then make it rhyme somehow!
The common common scheme is thus—
Eight six and eight and six.
With syllables you’ll make a fuss,
Let iambs be your bricks.
Inflect, my dear! Each second stressed,
And mind it’s all well tuned.
Lines odd and even rhyme when pressed,
And blooms grow best when pruned.
Used well by both the great and small,
The common puts at ease.
Of course, it may not top them all,
But seldom does displease.
The common measure remains my favorite, and my book of three hundred poems, “Merry Meet & Merry Part”, is written exclusively in this lovely lilt.
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