I saw him then, that look of dread
Though months before I thought him dead.
His gate unsure and out of sync,
A scrape of red across his head.
He stepped too close, I did not blink.
His breath was sweet from heavy drink.
And though he looked as if quite mad,
He was a gentle man, I think.
Two bills he knew I always had.
His needs were slight, his wants were sad.
Someone to see his soul was right;
Though rough and worn, he was not bad.
In church, he said, he’d be that night,
As if a debt were owed to rite.
He walked away, his thanks polite,
My guilt and conscience to indict.
Coyright Joseph E Bird, 2014
Joseph E Bird 
December 28, 2014 at 8:45 pm
Mr. Bird, I REALLY enjoyed this poem. You have me going back and searching rhyme patterns. I am wondering if there is a specific name for what you created, with the fourth stanza not following the pattern of the other three, but using same sound four consecutive times. It is also futuristic in that it was “coyrighted in 2104.” Sharing the drink?
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December 28, 2014 at 9:52 pm
The poem is written with four four-line stanzas, or quatrains. It is written in iambic tetrameter. Iambic meaning the emphasis is on every other syllable, such as
bah BAH bah BAH bah BAH bah BAH.
Because there are four syllables of emphasis for each line, it is tetrameter.
The rhyming pattern is as follows:
First stanza is AABA
Second stanza is BBCB
Third stanza is CCDC
Fourth stanza breaks the pattern and instead of DDED, it is DDDD, which signals the end of the poem.
It’s my first attempt at such a structered poem. Glad you liked it. And yes, I wrote it 90 years from now.
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