Poetry in Motion Poems

The Saraband Sonnet

Tinnitus Orchestra

I listen to the ringing in my ears
Weird music played on invisible strings:
A buzz saw cutting through the silent years.

Where are the musicians that play these chords,
On instruments that sound like buzzing hordes,
Of bumble bees in fields of wild flowers,
At the end of a spring day’s cool showers.

I wish this orchestra would take a break,
A few minutes for a cup of coffee:
Sometimes I think my sanity’s at stake.

If only they could learn another tune,
Perhaps the sound of birds or a full moon,
Something that sounds less like a swarm of bees,
And more like the voice of the seven seas.

Line count: 14
Form: The Saraband Sonnet based on a dance form and introduced in Spain in the 1700s. It is a four-stanza poem alternating between 3-line Tercet stanzas and 4-line quantrain stanzas. The lines are composed of either iambic tetrameter or pentameter. Stanzas one and three are tercet stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a-x-a, where the second line does not have to rhyme with any other line or it can rhyme with line two in the third stanza. Stanzas two and four are quantrains with rhyme schemes of b-b-c-c, b-c-b-c, b-c-c-b, or any combination thereof. Meter is tetrameter, which is 8 syllables of 4 iambic or trochaic feet, or pentameter, which is 10 syllables of 5 iambic or trochaic feet.