• Week 32 • Kyrielle •

In the photograph the sun bands
hair, competes gold for orange. Hands
splay in farewell, splinter the cast
who fill the image from the past

lives dreamed afresh begin to wheel
a constellation of zeal
burnishes the souls to outlast
this static image from the past

this photo, see? I’m still a wife,
in the set of mouth lies the strife
to come, as I come home at last
and pluck the image from the past

and step into that June day’s light,
concede to live is to take flight
from a life becalmed at half mast;
beware the image from the past

from this side of time my wings sprout
a pain like teething, fever, doubt;
beneath old Sol, the wingspan’s vast,
they tear the image from the past

An 8 syllable French form with a repeated refrain, a Kyrielle is written in rhyming couplets, or in quatrains. The rhyme structure is aabB ccbB ddbB, etc.