The Sky Shines (through my unconscious, aligned).
The sky shines deep within my awakened mind.
Bright particles beam through my open thoughts;
Clairvoyance shows the path that I have sought.
While walking, dreams are left so far behind!
I'm weaving a gossamer veil that I'll bind
With all the rainbow colors now combined.
This is the path that dreamers long have sought.
The sky shines.
Don't be afraid of these sweet faery signs.
You are a brilliant light that underlines
The wild enchantment of a magic knot
That you might see in my paper's ink blot!
Let your mind be bright, free, and unconfined.
The sky shines!
19
Can we live without love?
In Kyrgyzstan, in Armenia,
In Brittany, in Venezuela,
Without sharing his emotions,
With God or Saint Joseph,
Regardless of his birth,
The color of his skin,
No matter how much he’s worth,
Can we live without love?
In Greece or the Cyclades,
In the sun or under the Big Dipper,
In the light, in a dungeon,
Can we live without love?
20
Can we live without love?
In Rio, or in Calcutta,
in Marrakech or in Berlin,
in Paris or in Marseille,
at the sea, in the countryside,
No matter how hard you try,
To suspend time, or anything
No one will read your rondeau,
Can we live without love?
In Brest or Carcassonne,
In the gardens of the Essonne,
In the flowery countryside
Or in Véronique’s bed?
Who would you like to have lunch with?
With Mylène Farmer, I think,
Love is important,
But less than a beautiful rondeau,
Who would you like to have lunch with?
You have to sleep alone at night
Or drink a good whiskey,
Should you think about friends?
With Mylène Farmer, I think,
Or this cousin Catherine,
His voice is a touching sapphire,
Love is important,
But less than a beautiful rondeau.
Avec qui aimeriez vous déjeuner ?
Avec Mylène Farmer, je crois,
C’est important l’amour,
Mais moins qu’un beau rondeau,
Avec qui aimeriez vous déjeuner ?
Faut il dormir seul la nuit
Ou boire un bon whisky,
Faut il penser à ses amis ?
Avec Mylène Farmer, je crois,
Ou cette cousine Catherine,
Sa voix est un touchant saphir,
C’est important l’amour,
Mais moins qu’un beau rondeau.
I will find you in the moonlight,
as the hall clock’s chiming midnight,
drifting slowly with the moon beams
‘mongst the stars, caressing daydreams,
as your thoughts reflect your heart light.
Somewhere floating out of eyesight
through the cosmos, dreamy space flight,
while defying earthly slipstreams,
I will find you.
There we’ll kiss in dim of starlight
while enjoying love’s sweet birthright;
passions stirring in our bloodstreams,
hearts are racing ‘long the jet streams.
There beyond the stars at midnight
I will find you.
June 21, 2026
Poem of the Day - June 22, 2026
Today I am so glad to be alive
Give thanks; that I have made it through the night.
Against the odds again I will survive
To take you on, I won't give up the fight.
You thought you would just take away my sight
And of my very life you would deprive,
But I won't let you claim me, try you might
Today I am so glad to be alive.
And I am making plans to help me thrive
Because I have awoken with insight,
My strength and courage I will now revive
Give thanks; that I have made it through the night.
A brand-new day with hope my future's bright
This fear of death; I'll let my mind archive
Just reach into my soul with all my might
Against the odds again I will survive.
For never more my doubts I'll let contrive
To bring me down or shudder at your sight.
These demons from within, away I'll drive
To take you on, I won't give up the fight.
And therefore, take my pen so I can write
Forever on and upwards shall I strive.
Just trust that everything will be alright,
And greet each morning, when I do arrive
Today I am so glad to be alive.
People still seek to improve lives,
Proudly wearing red, white, and blue.
They have endured much bitter strife
With opinions of many hues.
Women deserve the right to choose.
People seek lives both rich and rife
With honesty and kind muses,
But they still seek to improve lives.
I'm keeping my Bald Eagle dice
To guard myself against a ruse
And protect myself from snake bites
Hidden beneath red, white, and blue.
Citizens are attached with glue
To the Internet that rises
For new, online interviews.
The youths have sung to such great heights!
Kindness prevails beneath clouds white.
Love all around these states is cool--and
Living united's a delight
With opinions of many hues.
Our faithful oath has been renewed
To build a community high.
Help others who need joyous cues.
Friends in America are kind;
People still seek to improve lives!
America is a free land
Where citizens work smart and hard,
An excellent place for a band.
Everyone kind and full of heart.
So nice to have a flat, green yard.
Americans work with their hands.
A safe country for which they guard,
America the fast, free land!
Be sure to lend a helping hand.
It's not hard to send a greeting car
When Fourth of July feasts command.
Thriving citizens who work so hard!
For two-five-oh years, off the charts!
The territory rolls so grand!
All of our music playing's starred.
An excellent place for a band!
The stars and stripes make a grandstand
With yummy barbecue grills charred.
And beaches from host to coast sand.
Everyone so kind and full of heart!
I would never try to discard
The honest values of the heartland
That we hold in lofty regard
In this grainland with its store-brand.
America is a freakin' free land!
A hush drifts through the waking day,
a quiet pulse that will not stay;
it lingers where the shadows bend,
a breath the morning tries to mend,
soft echo of a fading ray.
Moments rise, then slip away,
unraveling in their tender sway~
yet still the whisper finds its end:
a hush drifts through.
The world repeats its small ballet,
turning time in its own way;
what’s lost may circle back again,
arriving where it once had been~
a hush drifts through.
I did not know I had it in me
To bring another person glee.
That my words could bring a smile
And we could sit and laugh a while.
Isn’t this, how life should be?
How sweet are days when frivolity
Can hold the course for all to see.
What great interludes beguile
I did not know this open ease.
There used to be hostility
Until I freed the child in me
And set him loose to play in style
Where a younger lad could rule the aisle
And care-free actions be set free
I did not know I could so please.
My hair falls free in wind and rain
And in sun, it flows free again.
No scarf nor cloth shall press my locks,
Nor bargain me in dismal frocks.
Around my neck I wear no chain.
I brush my hair, I snap my mane.
The banal bonnet I disdain.
I listen not where evil talks.
My hair falls free
Cast not a slur to Music's strain;
Music that lets my hair remain
In wild, symphonic flowing locks
That spurs remarks in envious talks.
My hair falls free in wind and rain.
Ridin' horses in the twilight.
My fate's to wear starred cowboy hats!
I'm on the road all day-n-night.
Receivin' a bright moonlight bath.
I've been travellin' this long dark path.
Will be ridin' till all's made right.
I've gotta calm the inner wrath.
Ridin' horses in the twilight.
The sun going down is a sight.
Makes me wanna have a quick chat,
But my horse keeps ridin' with might.
My fate's to wear starred cowboy hats.
Cowboys don't need to carry maps.
They ride on into the black night,
And bathe in moonlight after laps.
I'm on the road all day and night!
Flyin' high on my horse in flight!
If there's a fuss, I'll stop all that.
Riden' high to escape the strife.
Receivin' a bright starlight bath!
Just thought I saw a blue bobcat!
But ain't no cause to feel no fright.
Cause this is my true habitat!
And I'm lovin' my lucky life!
Ridin' horses is my birthright.
[Chorus]
I'm gonna keep on ridin' on yonder.
Yep! The Grand Canyon's awaitin'....
The cowboy's Rondeau Redouble!
When ghosts return from traumas past
Dark clouds in the mind are cast
The scars they left are painful still
As deep within emotions fill
Sometimes leaving you downcast
Then the spectre will fade at last
Its haunting sails unfurl on its mast
from its deck dark waters spill
When ghosts return
When upon you they have trespassed
Dark memories leave you aghast
Your inner thoughts these ghosts distil
Which leaves you in a state so shrill
As you feel the traumatic blast
When ghosts return
Enchanted nights beneath glow of moon
Love casts its spell as lovers swoon
The stars have twinkles in their eyes
Trees gaze up at the starry skies
As they sway to a starry tune
Frogs on lily pads start to croon
Hoping a reply will come soon
A moonflower stirs and then sighs
Enchanted nights
Shadows play by a glowing dune
Fireflies flicker where leaves are strewn
A cricket's song begins to rise
The moon loves this musical prize
Dolphins babbling in the lagoon
Enchanted nights
Lucille, Myriam, Marguerite,
Know, I am not looking for an angel,
Ludivine, Cécile, Catherine,
Françoise, Julie, Jacqueline,
Gaëlle, Sylvie, Antoinette,
Margot, Béatrice, Paulette,
Would you go to Italy, my angels,
Manon, Sophie, O pretty girls,
Irène, Suzanne, or Stéphanie,
Alexandria, Alexandra, Mélanie,
Judith, Pauline, Clara, Morgane,
Is it the intoxication of Monbazillac?
Know, I am not looking for an angel.
Rondeau of the basil
Here is for the basil,
A romantic Rondeau,
Go down into the garden,
Look for the aromatic strand,
Here is for the basil.
Have the right idea,
Accompany the raw vegetables,
Cook the pistou soup,
Do you want to purify the air?
Or perfume your duck?
Only cook with art,
Here is the basil for you,
In a romantic rondeau !
Rondeau du basilic
Voici pour le basilic,
Un rondeau romantique,
Descendez dans le jardin,
Cherchez le brin aromatique,
Voici pour le basilic.
Ayez la bonne idée,
Accompagnez les crudités,
Cuisinez la soupe au pistou,
Voulez vous purifier l’air ?
Ou parfumer votre canard ?
Ne cuisinez qu’avec art,
Voici pour vous le basilic,
En rondeau romantique ?
Introduction
An opening phrase in a rondeau carries an unusual burden: it must begin the poem naturally, then return with enough resonance to sound newly charged. That return creates one of the form's chief pleasures. A phrase that first seems descriptive may later become ironic, consoling, accusatory, or elegiac. As you read the community poems, watch how meaning accumulates around familiar words rather than simply repeating them.
Placed side by side, rondeaus reveal striking differences in temperament. One poet may make the circling movement feel musical and graceful; another may use it to suggest obsession, hesitation, ritual, or entrapment. The restricted rhyme field can produce polished song, conversational wit, heightened formality, or productive friction against everyday speech. Differences in syntax, stanza movement, imagery, and vocal stance become especially visible when several poets address similar emotions through the same recurring architecture.
Browsing multiple examples also shows why technical resemblance does not guarantee an identical reading experience. Consider how each poet prepares the refrain, manages anticipation, and decides what must change before familiar language returns. Some poems may closely observe established conventions, while others may adapt them. Read beyond the first example and compare the emotional work performed between repetitions. The collection becomes most rewarding when approached not as a display of one pattern, but as an ongoing conversation about memory, recurrence, pressure, and transformation.
Reading Guide
Read a rondeau at least twice. On the first pass, follow its voice and situation without pausing to audit technique. On the second, listen for how the confined soundscape and returning fragment shape expectation. Because the form makes certain sounds and words recur, small choices carry unusual weight: a delayed verb can accelerate a stanza, an altered context can darken familiar language, and a seemingly simple image can become a hinge. As you browse the poems in this collection, compare not only whether conventions are present, but what those conventions accomplish.
- Track the refrain's changing context. Note what has been revealed, questioned, or lost before the opening words return. Does the phrase retain its first meaning, or has the surrounding poem transformed it? Ask which poet creates the greatest semantic change with the least explanatory language.
- Listen to the rhyme words, not merely the rhymes. In a narrow rhyme field, end words become recurring landmarks. Strong choices advance thought and imagery; weak ones can feel selected only for sound. When comparing poems, ask whether each rhyme word feels inevitable in the sentence as well as audible to the ear.
- Observe syntactic movement across lines. A poet may use complete statements for ceremony and firmness, or carry sentences forward to resist the form's frequent closures. Where does the syntax pause, rush, or turn? Ask how that pacing affects the arrival of the refrain.
- Identify the poem's emotional turn. Repetition becomes more powerful when something changes between appearances: knowledge, tone, audience, or stakes. Locate the moment that revises your understanding. Does it occur through argument, image, confession, or a sudden shift in address?
- Notice the relationship between voice and polish. The form can support elevated lyricism, but it can also carry intimate speech, satire, prayer, or dramatic monologue. Ask whether the voice sounds inhabited throughout, or whether rhyme pressure occasionally pushes it into unnatural diction.
- Study the ending's double action. The final return must provide recognition while also producing consequence. Does it close the emotional circle, expose a contradiction, or leave the speaker caught inside repetition? Compare which endings feel earned rather than merely scheduled.
After reading several community poems, return to the ones that linger. Their memorability may come less from visible correctness than from the way sound, development, and recurrence become inseparable from the subject.
Writing Tips
Begin with pressure rather than pattern. A promising rondeau subject usually contains something that genuinely returns: a memory the speaker cannot dismiss, a ritual, a recurring joke, a warning, a promise, or an image that changes under scrutiny. The form is most persuasive when recurrence belongs to the emotional situation, not when a finished idea has simply been fitted into an external design.
- Choose an opening phrase with more than one possible life. Test phrases that can shift grammatically or emotionally when isolated and repeated. A purely informational opening often grows flat. Look instead for language that can move from observation to plea, from confidence to doubt, or from affection to grief without requiring alteration.
- Build a usable sound bank before drafting. List possible rhyme words, then sort them by image, tone, and function. Discard words likely to force inversions or decorative filler. A smaller bank of vivid, flexible words is more useful than a long list of technically available but emotionally irrelevant rhymes.
- Let each movement change the stakes. Do not spend the intervening lines restating the opening thought. Introduce a complication, counterimage, discovery, or change of audience. The returning phrase gains force from what happens while it is absent; development is what converts repetition into transformation.
- Vary sentence length against the form's audible closures. If every line ends a grammatical unit, the poem may sound clipped or sing-song. Carry selected sentences across line endings, then reserve a firm stop for an important assertion. This tension can preserve conversational energy without erasing the rondeau's musical poise.
- Give rhyme words real work. Place nouns, verbs, or charged modifiers at line endings when possible. Avoid padding a sentence merely to reach an available sound. One common beginner mistake is allowing rhyme to dictate logic, producing strained word order or a sudden change in diction that the speaker would not otherwise use.
- Use imagery to prevent abstraction from circling in place. Recurrent thoughts need sensory anchors: a cooling cup, a scoreboard light, a locked gate, a particular smell after rain. Concrete details allow each section to add evidence, so the poem develops even while its language returns.
- Protect the speaker's individuality. Formal elegance need not mean generalized or antique-sounding language. Decide who is speaking, to whom, and under what pressure. Then check every polished phrase against that dramatic situation. If the voice would never say it aloud, the rhyme has probably taken control.
- Design the last return from the beginning. Imagine several possible emotional destinations for the refrain before completing the draft. It might arrive as verdict, echo, surrender, punch line, blessing, or unresolved compulsion. Choose preceding language that creates that effect without explaining in advance how the reader should feel.
During revision, read the poem aloud once for sense and once while exaggerating the end sounds and pauses. Mark any rhyme that attracts attention for the wrong reason, any line that stalls before the refrain, and any repeated phrase whose meaning remains unchanged. Then test the draft on a reader without explaining the intended turn. If the final return feels both recognizable and newly necessary, the structure is serving the poem rather than displaying itself.
Interesting Facts
- The shortest words may carry the longest echo. Because the refrain is only a fragment of the opening, its significance depends heavily on context. A modest phrase can become the poem's most memorable element when later lines alter who seems to speak it, what it refers to, or whether it can still be believed.
- Restriction can sharpen narrative selection. A rondeau rarely has room to narrate every stage of an event. The poet must choose the few details that make the returning language change. This can give even a story-driven poem the intensity of remembered flashes rather than a complete report.
- The same recurrence can imply opposite emotions. Repeated language may suggest fidelity and reassurance in one poem, then obsession or imprisonment in another. Tone arises from the material placed around the refrain, not from recurrence alone.
- Rhyme creates a hidden vocabulary test. The challenge is not simply finding matching sounds, but discovering which available words belong to the poem's imaginative world. Experienced writers often make a limited sound field feel coherent by linking its end words through image or argument.
- Silence helps perform the refrain. When read aloud, a slight pause before or after the returning fragment can create recognition, suspense, or finality. Rushing through it may conceal the very shift in meaning that the poem has prepared.
- Variation becomes visible through comparison. Browse several community interpretations and notice how poets balance song with speech, closure with continuation, and fidelity with adaptation. Reading a single example can make one solution seem mandatory; reading many reveals the range of artistic decisions available within the form's identity.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and structure meet most fruitfully when the poem's emotional life includes return. The themes below are literary possibilities, not measured rankings of the collection. Each can benefit from the rondeau's ability to make familiar language gather consequence as the speaker revisits it.
- Memory and grief. A recurring phrase can imitate the mind's return to a name, place, or final conversation. New details may turn remembrance from tenderness toward regret, acceptance, or unresolved absence.
- Love, longing, and separation. Restricted sound and repeated language suit the persistence of desire. The refrain may begin as a declaration and return as doubt, distance, promise, or self-correction.
- Time, seasons, and anniversaries. Cyclical subjects naturally converse with recurrence. Seasonal imagery can show that an event appears to repeat while the observer, relationship, or emotional meaning has changed.
- Conflict and moral witness. A statement repeated after evidence of harm can become accusation, warning, or vow. The form's polished music may create a purposeful tension with violence, injustice, or public loss.
- Food, home, and family ritual. Recipes, shared tables, and inherited customs contain repeated actions rich in sensory detail. A refrain can move from ordinary household speech to an emblem of belonging, estrangement, or remembrance.
- Sports, games, and competition. Repeated motions, rules, scores, and anticipated outcomes fit the form's pressure. The final return can capture triumph, comic reversal, endurance, or the recognition that play carries deeper personal stakes.
- Humor and social observation. Predictable recurrence can set up a punch line, while rhyme encourages verbal agility. The strongest comic rondeaus allow the joke to develop, so the refrain returns with a sharper target or an unexpected implication.
As you read the community poems, compare writers who approach similar subjects. One may make recurrence comforting while another makes it claustrophobic; one may rely on argument while another trusts image and implication. Those differences show how theme is not merely placed inside the form, but transformed by it.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of the rondeau lies between recurrence and change. Readers know that certain language will return, yet they want the poem to travel far enough for that language to matter differently. A technically recognizable draft may deliver the expected sounds and refrain on cue; a memorable one creates such strong emotional or intellectual development that the return feels unavoidable. Its pleasure comes not from recognizing a mechanism, but from realizing that the opening words now contain more than they did before.
Strong poems therefore make structure feel like an expression of subject. A speaker caught in memory may circle back because escape is impossible. A comic speaker may repeat a phrase because each new context exposes greater absurdity. An elegiac voice may return to the only words that remain speakable. Editors notice when the rhyme field contributes to this coherence: end words belong to the same sensory or argumentative world, sentences retain natural emphasis, and sonic recurrence intensifies rather than interrupts the voice. Form and content begin to seem mutually dependent.
Weakness appears when anticipation is answered mechanically. Predictable rhyme pairs can make the reader hear the next word before encountering the thought. Forced inversions, inflated diction, and filler clauses announce that sound has outranked meaning. Another common problem is over-explanation: the poet tells readers that the refrain has changed instead of creating a context in which they feel the change. The opposite problem also occurs when too little develops between returns. Then repetition remains repetition, and the ending confirms a pattern without deepening the poem.
Individuality survives convention through choices the pattern cannot make on the poet's behalf: the social texture of the voice, the precision of an image, the management of syntax, the degree of irony, and the moral or emotional risk taken before closure. Compare several poets' approaches and ask which poems could not have been written in quite the same way by anyone else. Such comparison refines judgment. It teaches readers to distinguish surface smoothness from expressive control, clever compliance from necessity, and a refrain that merely comes back from one that returns carrying the whole poem with it.
Read, Write & Share
Read beyond the first rondeau that catches your attention. Compare how several community poets prepare the refrain, sustain the restricted soundscape, and make familiar words arrive with altered force. Thoughtful comments can identify a compelling turn, an especially natural rhyme, or an ending whose return changed your understanding of the poem.
Then try composing your own rondeau and publish it on PoetrySoup. Let the collection serve not as a set of identical models, but as a workshop in possibilities-different voices testing how recurrence can console, unsettle, amuse, remember, or reveal.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 385 poems, providing many opportunities to compare how writers interpret the rondeau's recurring language, concentrated sound, and movement toward return. Some poets may follow its conventions closely, while others may adapt or challenge them in pursuit of a particular voice or effect. Reading across the collection helps reveal the difference between the shared framework and each poet's individual artistic decisions.
Rondeau Categories
Read wonderful rondeau poetry on the following sub-topics:
food, sports, time
and more.
Definition | What is Rondeau in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.