Terza Rima № 142391
slice of moonlight
i see parts of me in you
when i look upon your sleeping face;
i see your mother in there, too.
i sometimes use my lips to trace
the gentle curve of cheek or brow,
and sweetness of your skin i taste.
your breath comes easy, so gentle now
as i rock you slowly in my arms;
what do you dream? do you know how?
you win my heart with simple charms
you do not know that you employ;
your virtue i pray is never harmed.
lie and sleep, my baby boy,
i watch you and i smile;
your sweet peace, my endless joy.
i will let you sleep this while
and weave your magic, your sleep within:
my heart is helpless against your wiles.
traced upon your lustrous skin
a silvery slice of moon-light
evokes the angel's glow within.
sleep my boy, my babe, goodnight.
17 comments
when i began this form, i thought it would be easier than it is. i guess i am not overly familiar writing tercet verses. and the rhyme scheme actually makes it a bit tricky, but i like it. it really does link the verses nicely.
There are plenty of rhyming dictionaries online; some of them useful. I know you don't want direct suggestions, but I reckon there are a fair few alternative phrases which would fit nicely and be a little less tricky. If I'm honest, my main problem with 'stabile' is that it instantly made me think that you'd misspelled 'stable' - even though that obviously wasn't the case, it still forced me to reread that line, which in turn interrupted my reading of the poem in its entirety.
thanks.
One slight grammatical point - line 15 ('your sweet peace my endless joy') needs either some punctuation or to be '...is my endless joy'. It probably holds up grammatically as it is, but it just feels wrong. Either way of remedying this would work without disrupting the rhythm, and would make me a happy reader ;-)
No other crits that I can see right now; good stuff!
glad you liked the edit.
Suggestions:
'your virtue i pray is never harmed.' - the meter is slightly off. Try something like
'I pray that you be never harmed', or another idea,
'Let silence softly wrap you warm'. it ain't perfect, but play with it :-)
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