Ralph, that's very fine, a good take-off on Heracleitus' epigram and an example of the compression trimeter is capable of. Jody, just muddle-headed me! Of course Dakota Greeting is ballad, as are many of my poems. Particularly the funny ones. In point of fact, the trim is usually reserved for elegiac purposes, as in this poem that Pursglove discussed in Acumen's review of VFN:
Dies Irae
At the field's edge a feather
clings briefly to a bough
before a change of weather
offers it to the plough,
much as it did my father.
|