Lucky Dip Saturday Mix – Susan Joy Clark

Creative Life, Poetry

Rocky Road Ice Cream, #Epulaeryu, #Poem

Willis Lam, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Creamy chocolate in a mound,

Fluffy marshmallows,

With cool crunchy nuts swirled in,

These textures combined,

In sweet harmony.

I like it.

Yum!

This was written for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie’s Lucky Dip — Saturday Mix challenge to write an epulaeryu poem.

Here is an explanation from their page on the epulaeryu form:

“The Epulaeryu poem is all about delicious food. It consists of seven lines with thirty-three (33) syllables. The first line has seven (7) syllables, the second line five (5), the third line seven (7), the fourth line five (5), the fifth line five (5), the sixth line three (3), and the seventh line has only one (1) syllable which ends with an exclamation mark. The form is 7/5/7/5/5/3/1. Each line has one thought which is about the main course.”

I was following the syllabic form but noticed afterwards that the words seem to make a fitting ice cream cone shape.

Dare I post two ice cream poems in the same day? I think I just did. It just seems so summery. Here is the other one. It’s a bit different in nature and tells a romantic story. By the way, rocky road is my favorite ice cream flavor. What is yours?

Creative Life, Poetry

Stillness, #Double Tetractys, #Lucky Dip -Saturday Mix

Photo by Susan Joy Clark, Verona Lake in Verona Park, NJ

Stillness

is calm

and peaceful,

safe and serene,

where there is no fear of flood or high tide.

As David said, “beside the still waters,”

I know my God,

lovingly,

will guide

me.

This was written in a double tetractys format for Lucky Dip — Saturday Mix. According to their page, here is an explanation of the tetractys form.

“Tetractys, a poetic form invented by Ray Stebbing, consists of at least 5 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10syllables (total of 20). Tetractys can be written with more than one verse, but must follow suit with an inverted syllable count. Tetractys can also be reversed and written 10, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Double Tetractys: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1

Triple Tetractys: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 10

and so on.

‘Euclid, the mathematician of classical times, considered the number series 1, 2, 3, 4 to have mystical significance because its sum is 10, so he dignified it with a name of its own – Tetractys. The tetractys could be Britain’s answer to the haiku. Its challenge is to express a complete thought, profound or comic, witty or wise, within the narrow compass of twenty syllables.’ – Ray Stebbing”