• Week 11 • Glosa •

The bruised scent of willow leaves
and even the river will drown.

She wakes alone beneath foreign eaves
to the kind of light that heaves,
at first, beyond the reach of the nascent day’s frown,
and the bruised scent of willow leaves.

Rain, drunk from drinking down
the sky for a month of nights, makes the brown
hill beyond the window lank, and the cuckoo grieves
that even the river will drown.

The sun, gone so long that no-one believes
him when he returns to gild the sleeves
of the dressing girl who goes to town
leaking the bruised scent of willow leaves.

The fragrance soaks her sodden gown
and fingers and hair – that fool-clown
she’d thought a god as he slid off his greaves
and whispered that even a river can drown.

Hard learnt by her, then, thieves’
ideals, prone to whimsy. She retrieves
the scraps of herself, her flowered crown,
and the bruised scent of willow leaves.

On the walk home she re-tastes last evening’s majoun
alongside the stories her mother never thought to boun
her with. No matter, now, who the clown-fool reaves
but nevermore will her river drown.

A Spanish poetic form that is made up of two parts: the establishment of a theme in a stanza known as a cabeza , while the glosa is the body of the poem stanzas that expand upon the theme, each stanza containing as its last line alternating lines of the cabeza. The cabeza can be any length but I’ve chosen two lines. I’ll add to this post later with other poems, as I’ve found this form quite interesting. The context has more room to change with a longer cabeza (which could be a stand-alone poem) to the glosa.