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An epic poem in seven parts about Aldren, a mage who learns that true power lies in gentleness and patience rather than force. Written in iambic pentameter couplets with deep occult symbolism.
A working notebook on English metrical feet, line lengths, and rhyme schemes — from iambs to pyrrhics, with examples from Shakespeare to Frost.
There is a moment, and if you have spent any time at all wrestling with poetry, you know the one, when a line you are reading suddenly clicks. Not because of what it means, though that matters too, but because of how it sounds. The syllables land in your ear like footsteps on a wooden floor: deliberate, rhythmic, almost musical. You feel the sentence before you finish parsing it. Something in your chest responds to the pattern the way your foot responds to a bass drum at a concert, which is to say, involuntarily and with mild embarrassment if you happen to be in a library.
That moment is what meter does. And once you notice it, you cannot un-notice it. It is the tattoo of poetry: permanent, occasionally regrettable, and the subject of far too many opinions at dinner parties.
When I first learned to write poetry, I treated "meter" and "rhyme scheme" like formalwear: impressive, a little stiff, and not something I'd put on unless I had a special occasion. Iambic pentameter sounded like something you'd order at an Italian restaurant. Dactylic hexameter sounded like a medical condition. And the word "pyrrhic", well, I assumed it was a typo someone had been too proud to correct for the last two thousand years. Over time, though, I've come to think of these terms more like instruments. Sometimes you want a drumbeat you can dance to. Sometimes you want a barely-there pulse under a conversational voice. Sometimes you want a pattern that snaps shut like a clasp at the end of every stanza. And sometimes, let's be honest, you want to show off at a dinner party.
In English, the most common tradition for organizing poetic rhythm is accentual-syllabic meter: lines built from a set number of feet (small stress-pattern blocks, which we will get to shortly) and usually a predictable overall rhythm. This is the system that gave us Shakespeare's plays, Milton's epics, Dickinson's hymns, and roughly forty percent of all greeting card verses. It is an extraordinarily flexible system, capable of everything from the thunderous grandeur of Paradise Lost to the tipsy sway of a limerick about a man from Nantucket.
And once I started seeing poems as modular, foot + line length + rhyme (or not), forms stopped being rules and started being choices. The difference is enormous. Rules make you anxious. Choices make you powerful. Or at least they make you feel powerful, which, when you are alone at a desk trying to make fourteen lines do something interesting, is close enough.
A five-part lullaby for the poet's daughter, Harper, exploring adoption as a deliberate act of love, the inner music of the self, and the promise of guardianship.
I. Threshold
You were eight months into this bright, baffling world—
eight months of milk-breath and clenched wonder—
when I met you.
Not a thunderclap.
Not a prophecy.
Just a doorway inside my ribs
opening on its quiet hinge
the instant your eyes took hold of mine.
Your mother—my beloved—
set you into the air between us,
and for a heartbeat the room went hushed,
as if even the curtains leaned in.
You did not know the word father.
You knew weight, warmth, return—
the grammar a baby speaks with her whole body.
You offered one hand,
a small question made of fingers.
I answered with my hands
and with the only vow that matters to an infant:
I stay.
From that first staying,
something crossed—
a single bright strand of me,
fine as dust in a sunbeam—
and settled softly inside you,
not as a claim,
as a beginning.
II. Choosing
Now you are ten months of morning,
two months of my learning your weather:
your sudden suns, your quiet moons,
the way you study faces
as if each one is a continent
you are deciding to trust.
Each day I am with you
that strand thickens—
not by force,
by returning.
Some families are inherited.
Ours is composed.
We chose each other
in the small, honest court of the living room,
with vows written in ordinary acts:
a bottle warmed at midnight,
a blanket found and tucked back in,
a lullaby hummed until the tears loosen.
Adoption is not an absence.
It is a second birth of the heart—
a yes made deliberate,
a home built from consent and care.
To be given you this way
is to be gifted twice:
first by love,
then by choice.
And I—astonished—
keep answering your reaching
with my staying.
A seven-part Masonic poem tracing the soul's journey from seeking splendor to finding truth in quiet labor, mercy, and self-examination.
A sonnet-like poem in ten stanzas inviting the reader into a mystical tavern where time unhooks its hands and souls find communion.
Where mists of silver robe the pilgrim road,
I found a door within the night that sings;
Its lintel carved, an omen of abode,
And laughter rose as if on unseen wings;
There beat a hearth whose coals like roses glowed,
And reined-in Time bowed low and rest bestowed.
The boards swung wide, a whisper: enter, wait,
And candles flamed to music of desire;
A gargoyle spout breathed alchemy of late—
Soft smoke curled up as if from Cupid’s lyre;
Transmuted tears to gold within the fire,
And named me brave who dared the inward choir.
Above the bar, the thoughtful goddess’ brow,
The arctic curtains trembled into glow;
Stern Pallas watched, as if she would avow,
While ravens, warned by wisdom, would not show;
My heart, once winter-locked, regained its throne,
And ruled the hush with warmth it called its own.
I ate from plates that seemed of morning’s glass,
And drank a night that tasted bright as prayer;
The throng, unyoked of debt, let all things pass,
While pixies salted joy into the air;
With manna-clear and amber, feast increased,
Till hunger knelt, delighted and released.