Hello dVerse Poets! How are you? Are you busy writing a poem a day this month? This is Merril from southern New Jersey hosting the Meeting the Bar challenge today. Spring is in full swing here! Meeting the Bar (MTB) means the challenge is to write a poem in the specified form. Today’s form is the pantoum. Many of you have written at least one pantoum before, but we haven’t featured it as an MTB challenge since 2019. It can be a challenging form, but perhaps it’s familiarity will make it somewhat easier in this busy month of poetry prompts.

As we see nature’s patterns and history repeating, the pantoum seems a good form to revisit. Today is the fourth anniversary of my mom’s death from Covid in the first wave–when the world was shut down. But I remember in my grief, how beautiful spring was, and how the flowers continued to bloom.

The pantoum is a form created by Malaysian poets, but originally, they were spoken poems dating from before the fifteenth century.

“Pantoum definition: a poem of any length, written in quatrains, in which the second and fourth lines of one stanza are repeated as the first and third, respectively, in the next stanza.” (Source: https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-pantoum-poem)

There are variations in pantoums. For this challenge you may write a pantoum with rhymed or unrhymed lines. However, you must use the third line of your first stanza as the second line in your final quatrain AND end with the first line. You may change/add some words and punctuation in your repeating lines to make the lines fit or to alter the context.
Here is a template for the form:

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Line 5 (repeat of line 2)
Line 6
Line 7 (repeat of line 4)
Line 8
Etc.
Last stanza:
Line 2 of previous stanza
Line 3 of first stanza
Line 4 of previous stanza
Line 1 of first stanza

If you want to use rhyme, the scheme is ABAB, BCBC, etc. and the final stanza is ZAZA.

Examples:
This heartbreaking one from Natalie Diaz, “My Brother at 3 A.M.”

Here is an example of one that rhymes by A.E. Stallings, “Another Lullaby for Insomniacs.”

For the prompt: Write a pantoum, according to the outline and directions above. It may be rhymed or unrhymed. You must repeat lines, as noted above. Your first line should be repeated as the final line of the poem.

Typical themes for pantoum poems are grief and love, or social commentary.
Because this is Poem in a Pocket Day, here are some optional themes:

1. Pockets—I think it might be difficult to sustain this form in a poem about literal pockets; however, consider using pockets as a metaphor.
2. Take a line from one of your own poems to use as your starting point.
3. Continue with spring/autumn themes—birth and rebirth, flowering, shadows, death, grief, and the passing of time/seasons.

This is poetry month, and many of us are writing to various poem a day challenges. I appreciate it if you have the time and inclination to write to this prompt!
Once you’ve posted your poem according to the guidelines above, add the link of your post to Mr Linky below. Then visit and read other contributors and leave a comment. That’s part of the fun of dVerse!