Soft petals are the contours of your face,
grown woman from the rosebud you once were;
just yesterday, a babe in my embrace.
Where once you were adorned in bows and lace
your pleats and leathers happily occur.
Soft petals are the contours of your face.
How could I know that you would set the pace
to spin each year into this whirling blur!
Just yesterday, a babe in my embrace.
The world has turned yet I would not erase
the kindness that your heart beats to transfer.
Soft petals are the contours of your face.
My daughter, there could be no better place
than this, the growing kinship we prefer.
Just yesterday, a babe in my embrace.
Your grown-up beauty flows with style and grace
these tears within my eyes cannot deter.
Soft petals are the contours of your face;
just yesterday, a babe in my embrace.
Pamela A. Lamppa
Copyright © 2016
All Rights Reserved
The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
Reference: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/villanelle
