​Quartina in Orbital Harness (a poem)

Click image to visit the
Highland Park Poetry website

For Jennifer Dotson,
my adopted bosun

By Moristotle

When I republished the quartina “Love your enemies deciphered in quartina” on November 29, 2022, I also submitted it to poet Jennifer Dotson, the founder and program coordinator for Highland Park Poetry, up in Highland Park, Illinois, for possible publication. Jennifer promptly let me know that she would publish it.
    Feeling encouraged to try my hand at another quartina, I asked Jennifer if she would suggest four end-words for me to use, and she challenged me to write something inspirational using the words “song,” “harness,” “planet,” and “energy.”
    I set to work on it and showed her the result, which I share here today (see below).
    She liked this one too and wanted to publish it as well, “unless you have other plans for publication.” (I did not.) She added that she was “very interested in sharing the quartina form^* with my poetry writing group...and maybe for a future poetry challenge.”

Quartina in Orbital Harness

My bosun bade me lift a soaring song,
Voice lyrics in harmonious harness 
To guide and hold aloft the energy 
Mother sun shines forth upon my planet: 
 
’Round glowing sun, I, like Earth, am planet, 
My twirls and orbs expressing energy 
To dance about my days in living song, 
Trusting Earth’s path to be my harness. 
 
Earth’s life plots on in holding harness 
Inspiring its denizens to sing song 
To voice their hearts, each itself a planet 
Living embraced by the shining energy 
 
That gave their kind, and all kinds, energy 
To follow its own descending planet 
Of family trees that weave a harness 
To bring each one to such a verse of song. 
 
Let each pour its energy into song 
To secure its planet heart in harness.
_______________
*  A quartina is a brief form of sestina, of my own devising, in which four (rather than six) end-words appear in a prescribed order in the poem’s four four-line stanzas and in its terminal couplet, as exemplified above.
    The quartina that led to the one above, “Love Your Enemies Deciphered in Quartina,” was posted on Highland Park Poetry's Facebook page on December 29. In case you are, like me, not on Facebook, here’s an image:

Click on image to enlarge it

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle