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On this day 70 BC, the poet Virgil was born and yet as with this extract from “First Georgic” i.e. poetic work related to agriculture, we can still relate, perhaps because he “combines technical agricultural knowledge with rich metaphorical language, transforming everyday rural life into an elevated narrative.” [source]

“When spring begins and the ice-locked streams begin
To flow down from the snowy hills above 
And the clods begin to crumble in the breeze, 
The time has come for my groaning ox to drag 
My heavy plow across the fields, so that 
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against it. 
Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice 
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield…” [more]

Aeons later the American poet Fanny Howe had her birth this day in 1940. Here’s an excerpt from a poem of hers that I like very much – “Far and Away”

“...What is a poet but a person
Who lives on the ground 
Who laughs and listens 

Without pretension of knowing 
Anything, driven by the lyric’s 
Quest for rest that never 
(God willing) will be found? 

Concord, kitchen table, 1966.
Corbetts, Creeley, a grandmother 
And me. Sweater, glasses, 
One wet eye. 

Lots of laughter 
Before and after. Every meeting 
Rhymed and fluttered into meter. 
The beat was the message”… [more]

And recently the WordPress ‘On This day’ alert, dug out a poem I wrote in 2021 “A Third October” based on an MTB prompt that Björn gave us then, which gave me the idea to revisit “The Cadralor” after these 5 years.

The Cadralor is a hybridised name from the 2 inventors, Lori Howe and Christopher Cadra

Poetry Style

  • 5 numbered stanzas
  • choose 3-10 lines per stanza (but keep same chosen stanza length throughout)
  • each stanza stands alone as an imagist poem (just the obliquest of connections)
  • 5th stanza pulls the 4 unrelated stanzas together into a poem of love, of yearning
  • rhymes and syllabic meter are NOT wanted

Useful Links
Cadralor rules of the form
example cadralor poems
MTB Cadralor 10.21

Once you have written and posted your poem, according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.
Please also TAG dVerse in your post, or include a link at the end of your poem that leads readers back to this dVerse prompt

[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]