Poetry Friday: Dizain square poems

And we’re back for Poetry Friday!

This month’s challenge, from Sara Lewis Holmes (poet, author, and also my mama) is to write a Dizain, a French form with ten lines of ten syllables each and rhyme scheme ABABBCCDCD.

Extra credit was to be given for using the word “square”, which made me think of boxes, which made me think of cats, which are one of my favorite topics. I was also packing for a trip to Pasadena, which is always made more exciting by the fact that if I leave my suitcase unattended for one single second, I’ll come back to find a cat inside making sure his fur gets to go to California.

So I wondered… what do they think they’re going to find when they plunge into suitcases and shopping bags like Indiana Jones diving under a closing temple gate?

Dizain

My cat slips into open suitcases
like doorways to other universes,
seeking in paper bags sacred spaces
and what portals may be found in purses.
(Too quick the wormhole always disperses.)
I used to seek these passages also.
I used to wonder what might be hollow,
tap on walls, dig holes too deep, spend my prayers
on bedsheet tunnels and closet cosmos.
We’re born with the cat’s question: what’s in there?

Please visit my poetry sisters and read their Dizains!

• Liz