POSITANO PANTOUM

A full moon over Positano lights
the sea. Everywhere the sea glistens,
illuminating lush lemons sparkling
like remote stars, right here in the garden.

The sea, everywhere the sea glistens,
revealing fragrant red bougainvillea
like remote stars, right here in the garden.
Mesmerized by the sea’s royal reflections,

revealing fragrant red bougainvillea,
lovers stop and stare at these enchantments.
Mesmerized by the sea’s royal reflections,
sweet figs ripening in rich abundance,

lovers stop and stare at these enchantments:
pink trumpet flowers cascading down cliffs,
sweet figs ripening in rich abundance,
everything mirrored, doubling this dreamscape.

Pink trumpet flower cascading down cliffs
illuminating lush lemons sparkling,
everything mirrored, doubling this dreamscape:
a full moon over Positano’s lights.

Dianalee Velie lives and writes in Newbury, New Hampshire. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has a Master of Arts in Writing from Manhattanville College, where she has served as faculty advisor of Inkwell: A Literary Magazine. She has taught poetry, memoir, and short story at universities and colleges in New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire and in private workshops throughout the Northeast. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have been published in hundreds of literary journals throughout the USA and Canada. She enjoys traveling to rural school systems in Vermont and New Hampshire teaching poetry for the Children’s Literacy Foundation. Her play, "Mama Says," was directed by Daniel Quinn in a staged reading in New York City. She is the author of three books of poetry: Glass House, First Edition, and The Many Roads to Paradise.

The modern pantoum, of which this is a perfect example, is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.