Special Feature: "Flatland: Variations on a Ballad, Part III" by the Editor

Flatland:  Variations on a Ballad

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

III                          

 

Cold mountain

dressed in snow

my eagle’s scream

echoes in your wind

through icy air

around your crags.

I am a wolf

with eagle’s beak.

With grizzly, bare arms I hug you.

With twisted, foot roots I hold on.

My blood flows,

warming my body,

then I awaken

flattened on a bed of blades.

Plaintively I cry in pain.

My spirit fades.

Poet's Notes:  Part III retains the four-line stanzas of the traditional ballad form but not much else, save for a Dickinson-like end-line assonance and hard end-line rhyme in the final stanza.  The theme of the original is still recognizable, as is the animal imagery.