peep from both ends of the keyhole
as formless consciousness aware
we discover there’s no one there
and yet strangely presence feels whole
Radiance of life reigns around sweet relationship
offered by the great "I am that I am" Creator
as I yield to Him Who is my sovereign Director
midst blessed fellowship along wondrous worship.
Against suffering gloom of frustration-caused pain
I am bouncing back with hope-lit serenity-glow
revived to bloom along abundant blessings' flow
since the great "I am that I am" grants salvation-gain.
Gripped by "I am the way, the truth and the life" creed
surmounting unbelief's stroke that attacks the heart
triumphantly prevailing over weakness' dart
I am keeping the faith, shining with love and kindness' deed.
Mother's love is always running Nonparallel
Surely Normal Natural Human Instinct.
No Controversy at all, Quite Distinct.
Continuous Fluent Flow ! Unidirectional !
The greatest bliss of my life to glitter and shine
is children, while raising up and caring them.
My Family tree to grow , Me being Stem.
The siblings are just branches in between.
In their childhood, I was the light to show way.
Being grown up they turned my success after all.
Siblings prosper and to impress each and all.
The strong branches are cheerful, joyous, to sway.
Chocolate cookies, scent fills my home
Nice phone calls with friends from afar
The good moments shine like a star
New birds come to feeder and roam
Some things today, didn't go well
But good times replaced it all
Pets comfort, while I hear peace call
Like the wind chime ringing its bell
Hours can change with attention
Simple things inside my soul
The flag flies in breeze on the pole
There's so many things I could mention
Even with weakness, strength is found
Like a gem beneath many rocks
Gratitude shines during the walks
Never forget the sights and the sound
Heidi Sands
9/4/26
(C)opyright
*8 syllables
1497 Aug-Sep No 2 Poetry Contest. Brian Strand
A bed of golden flowers spreads across blades of grass
It's like a blanket of sunshine on the ground
A resting place waits without a sound
Soft, comforting, unlike the broken glass
Pieces of glass, those sharp memories left behind
As views of blurred miles are passed
The wheels of change turn, oh so fast
Old thoughts, new thoughts, pass through my mind
A bed of golden flowers remains fresh and new
Thriving safely, freely, on the way
Highlights such a beautiful, clear day
Offering peace with a bright, stunning, view
There is no return to what was lost
Only today, as precious time moves forward
Although there's proof of being no coward
Knowing the bed of flowers will fade with the frost
8/30/26
(C)opyright
“Music is the wine that feels cup of silence”
At centre of the Dance Group performers arre blind.
But that doesn’t matter at all, any one can find,
Each one competent in musical sense.
Music is the wine filling the cup of silence,
Keen Hearing Power dominating Eye Contact.
Never to depend on a Visual Impact.
Blind guys rely on their own rhythmic sense.
Music Is the wine assisting to step rhythmic.
Perfect synchronisation to cope up with dance.
Dancing under rhythm and tune to enhance.
Performance is sure to be systematic.
Music is the wine assuring to step rhythmic
Blind guys blessed by sharp sense of hearing
are prompt to dance delight in group gathering
empowered by mode of sensuous supreme sonic.
Simplicity
by Frank Daub
I showed a wooden pencil to a friend.
He tried to give attention
going directly to the end
of the pointed lead.
“You have to sharpen that,” he said,
analyzing quickly my waste of time.
He preferred drop-down menus
on miniscule screens
while waiting in a line.
Friends
by Frank Daub
It was an open door
that, without sound,
called me in.
I stood with hesitation until I realized my sin
of never trusting.
I reckoned, in the human-only-way,
that such a friendly looking door
could only be surprise demand
of meeting expectations.
I saw only with my eyes
and not my soul.
Yet without entering through that threshold,
I somehow realized
That I could not be whole
enough to love.
Outside I waited, long enough
to shake the fear and take the chance
that there are friends inside,
friends to bring me song and dance,
to bring me dreams
to tell me stories of loving.
I entered then,
And enter every chance that comes,
To meet and sing and dance,
To know that I am home.
God has gifted five children to love and care.
I kept them as cluster of abloom blossoms :
Preserved as precious treasures in my bosom.
Same Love and Affection, all siblings must share.
'
Neither a Question to Discriminate
Nor any Partiality to Occur
If required, Special Care for child weaker.
Each child gets Attention needed : No Debate.
A Parent's love always running Nonparallel
Surely Normal Natural Human Instinct.
No Controversy at all, Quite Distinct.
Continuous Fluent Flow ! Unidirectional !
The greatest bliss of my life to glitter and shine
is children, while raising up and caring them.
My Family tree to grow , Me being Stem.
All the siblings are just branches in between.
In their childhood, I was the light to show way.
Being grown up they turned my success after all.
Siblings prosper and to impress each and all.
The strong branches are cheerful, joyous, to sway.
I'm a hollow soul with a needle, no matter if it's herion ice or crack...I don't have a little monkey, I have king Kong hangin on my back... Where's my wife and kids these days, what happened to my job...I haven't brushed my teeth or showered in a week, when did I become a slob....I'm a hollow soul with a needle, my own family will I lie to cheat and steal.... Cause all I care about is getting high, just to change the way I feel...So off to the methadone clinic again, can't shoot herion anymore... cause I can't find anymore veins to hit, and my arms are getting sore...I'm a hollow soul with a needle as I lay here feeling so sick... with restless legs and upset stomach, just craving that hollow little prick...Man that's messed up about Brandon and Randy, both of them dying this year....If I didn't catch hepatitis c shooting up, ide probably drink a little beer....So a hollow soul with a needle kids, is this what you really want to be.... Cause it will take your lives to the darkest hell you're eyes will ever see....
IQ measures common intelligence.
Brain power realizes, analyses.
High IQ of Polymath surprises.
Average IQ gives us enough guidance.
Social IQ is too much important
for leaders in political strife
also, for each in domestic life
to act and interact at any instant.
Emotional IQ to respect not to ignore
to feel mental status of others,
to resonate for birds of same feathers
on closeness in relationship to explore.
Spiritual intelligence sensual and real
controlling all the three, higher or lower
distributing reasoning, emotion and power.
Soul IQ when high is divine and ethereal.
Another sleepless night, I cruise and am lost.
A midnight drive, the perfect cost.
Intoxicated by the most beautiful soul.
She invades my dreams, makes them whole.
She is the sunshine, to my cherry tree.
Nourishing love, passion fruit to be.
The river connecting the ocean, to the endless sea.
Her voice reminds me of angels, a romantic dream.
Her eyes more precious than shooting stars,
A beauty that can see through souls.
The Goddess of love, Venus; a heart of gold.
Now I drive in the moonlight, while the world sleeps.
Thinking of ways to always keep;
Your love & your smile; for who needs sleep to dream?
When you exist to me.
N.P
palms and soles of feet
third eye zone and toroidal heart
entwined with spine bliss beats start
as drunken delight rapture replete
Heirloom is kept as family’s treasure
Legacy of cultural values’ worth
Defying heritage-loss amidst dearth
Yon third generation-wealth’s exposure.
Transcending all modernization-trends
While transformed for functional need
Heirloom’s style exudes our forefathers’ creed
Expressing close ties among clans and friends.
Grateful to have worn such heirloom with pride
I praise the Lord* for my lineage that’s blest
Around home’s warmth and parental care’s zest
Cherishing to stay in the victor’s side.
Winning “Best Costume” for this heirloom’s seal
My heart does soar toward triumphant flight
Then photo displays thanksgiving delight
Revealing gracious patriotism zeal.
*Psalm 34:1 I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
June 17, 2026
10th place, "THE MARVELOUS THINGAMAJIG" Poetry Writing Contest
Sponsored by Daniel Henry Rodgers; judged on 7/2/2026
when our head and heart act hand in glove
we sense the presence of God draw near
purpose of earth life becomes clear
one life to live, one life to love
Introduction
The pleasure of an enclosed rhyme often lies in delayed recognition: an opening sound seems to recede, the middle draws the ear inward, and then the earlier sound returns with new weight. That movement can feel like a door closing, a thought coming full circle, or a speaker discovering that escape was only temporary. Reading several examples together makes those differences in effect especially vivid.
As you browse the community poems, you may encounter intimate reflections, compact narratives, arguments, comic turns, elegies, or sequences built from multiple enclosed stanzas. One poet may make the inner rhyme conspicuous and songlike; another may soften it through enjambment or understated diction. Some writers use the outer return to create reassurance, while others make it sound inevitable, ironic, claustrophobic, or unresolved. The same architecture can therefore hold sharply different voices and emotional temperatures.
A single poem demonstrates one solution to the form's pressures. A collection reveals the range of available choices: how firmly the rhymes announce themselves, where syntax pauses, whether the middle lines deepen or disrupt the opening, and how the final line answers what came before. Read beyond the first example and compare how each poet handles anticipation and return. The most rewarding question is not simply whether the pattern can be heard, but what the enclosure allows the poem to mean, remember, conceal, or release.
Reading Guide
Reading enclosed rhyme well requires attention to both immediate language and delayed sound. The outer echo asks the ear to remember, while the closer middle pairing can create a moment of concentration or acceleration. Yet poems vary in how openly they display that design. As you read the community poems, listen for the pattern without treating it as the only source of value. Notice how syntax, image, voice, and emotional movement cooperate with the returning sounds-or productively resist them.
- The weight of the opening: Notice which word or image is placed where the first rhyme begins its long arc. Because that sound will return after an interval, it can plant an expectation. When comparing poems, ask what the opening teaches you to anticipate.
- The inward movement: Examine what happens in the two central lines. They may intensify one image, introduce evidence, contradict the speaker, or briefly change direction. Ask whether the middle feels like a chamber of thought, a quick exchange, or a pressure point.
- The quality of return: Listen to how the closing rhyme relates emotionally to the opening one. A matching sound can carry a changed meaning. Does the final line confirm, revise, mock, mourn, or release the expectation established earlier?
- Syntax against sound: Mark where sentences actually pause. Enjambment can conceal the rhyme structure, while end-stopped lines can make it ceremonial or emphatic. Which community poems let grammar reinforce the enclosure, and which create tension by running through it?
- Rhyme diction: Consider whether the paired words belong naturally to the poem's voice. Familiar rhyme partners can produce clarity, humor, or predictability; less expected choices may create surprise. Ask whether each rhyme enlarges the subject or merely completes the pattern.
- Stanza-to-stanza development: In longer poems, compare how each enclosed unit changes the argument or scene. Repeated returns can become cumulative rather than static. Does each stanza deepen the central concern, or does the poem keep arriving at the same emotional destination?
After reading several poems, revisit the ones whose endings stayed with you. Often the most revealing comparison concerns not rhyme accuracy, but how differently poets turn an audible return into discovery, recognition, confinement, or closure.
Writing Tips
Begin an enclosed rhyme draft with a movement worth enclosing. A memory that returns altered, an argument that turns inward, a scene framed by departure and arrival, or a confession interrupted by resistance can all give the pattern dramatic purpose. In workshop terms, the goal is not to pour sentences into a preset container. It is to discover why this particular subject benefits from an opening sound that disappears, gathers pressure, and comes back.
- Choose material with an inner and outer layer. Look for a subject that can support framing: public appearance around private thought, present action around remembered experience, or certainty around doubt. This gives the central pair something consequential to reveal rather than merely two convenient rhymes to supply.
- Draft the emotional turn before perfecting rhyme. Sketch what should change between the first and final lines. If the ending reaches exactly the same conclusion as the opening, the enclosure may feel circular without being transformative. Decide what the middle allows the speaker or reader to understand differently.
- Build a flexible rhyme bank. List exact, near, multisyllabic, and grammatical possibilities, then note their tones and associations. Do not select a word solely because it rhymes. A formally tidy but emotionally irrelevant noun is usually more damaging than a subtler sound correspondence that preserves voice and meaning.
- Protect natural syntax. Beginners sometimes invert word order, add filler, or distort idiom to land on an end word. Read each line as prose and ask whether a person in this poem would genuinely phrase the thought that way. If not, alter the sentence, the rhyme word, or the route to it.
- Give the middle pair real work. Its quick sonic connection can create intimacy, insistence, wit, argument, or acceleration. Use that closeness to sharpen contrast or deepen an image. Avoid writing two interchangeable lines whose only function is to satisfy the central echo.
- Vary pacing through lineation. End-stopping every line makes the enclosure highly audible but may produce a boxed, repetitive cadence. Strategic enjambment can keep the thought moving across rhyme points. Choose pauses according to emotional pressure rather than applying the same punctuation pattern automatically.
- Control the visibility of the rhyme. Strongly stressed rhyme words create a pronounced frame; lighter stresses and syntactic continuation make it more discreet. Decide whether your poem should sound incantatory, conversational, comic, meditative, or severe, then adjust diction and emphasis accordingly.
- Earn the final return. The last rhyme is likely to feel anticipated even when readers cannot name the structure. Avoid ending with explanation merely to make the design clear. Let the final image, action, or statement alter the significance of its earlier partner and provide more than acoustic completion.
During revision, read the draft aloud twice: first while emphasizing the rhyme words, then in a natural speaking voice. The first reading exposes weak echoes and accidental monotony; the second reveals forced syntax and misplaced pauses. Finally, cover the line endings and judge the poem for imagery, development, and voice. Restore them and ask whether the enclosure intensifies those qualities. Formal compliance should be the poem's pressure system, not its entire achievement.
Interesting Facts
- The far rhyme depends on memory. Because its answer is delayed by the central pair, the opening sound remains quietly active in the reader's ear. Its return can therefore feel more consequential than two immediately adjacent rhymes, especially when the repeated sound carries a changed idea.
- The middle can become the emotional center. Although the outer lines provide the frame, the closer inner echo may attract greater attention through speed and concentration. A poet can use this apparent center to reveal a secret, stage a conflict, or prepare a reversal.
- Enjambment can make enclosure almost subliminal. When syntax passes through line endings, readers may feel cohesion before consciously hearing its source. By contrast, firm pauses display the pattern and can produce a measured, ceremonial, comic, or deliberately claustrophobic effect.
- A return does not have to mean agreement. The final rhyme can oppose the opening statement even while echoing its sound. This allows sonic closure and intellectual conflict to coexist, giving the stanza a finished surface with an unsettled interior.
- Repeated stanzas create larger patterns of pressure. In a sequence, each enclosed unit can function as a fresh frame, a step in an argument, or another attempt to contain what resists containment. The challenge is development: recurrence should accumulate meaning rather than reset it.
- Subtle adaptation changes the reader's expectations. Near rhyme, shifted stress, or an intentionally muted echo can soften the sense of a sealed structure. Such choices are most persuasive when they support voice or subject. Compare several community poems to see how recognizable enclosure can coexist with different degrees of sonic strictness.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and enclosure affect one another. A theme involving return, containment, resistance, or reconsideration can make the rhyme movement feel psychologically necessary rather than ornamental. The following are literary possibilities, not rankings or claims about which subjects occur most often in the collection.
- Memory and recurrence: A remembered moment can enter through the opening, deepen in the middle, and return altered at the close. The delayed echo resembles the way memory disappears from immediate attention and then resurfaces with unexpected force.
- Confinement and escape: Physical rooms, social restrictions, private fears, or self-imposed limits suit a stanza whose sounds seem to close around its center. A poet can intensify the enclosure or use flowing syntax to enact resistance against it.
- Love, separation, and reconciliation: The distance between outer partners can suggest two people divided by events, while the inner pair concentrates intimacy or conflict. The return may become reunion, resignation, repetition, or the recognition that closeness has changed.
- Grief and absence: A sound that comes back when a person cannot may create a poignant tension between presence and loss. The form can offer audible completion without pretending that emotional closure is complete.
- Argument and self-questioning: The opening may make a claim, the middle complicate it, and the ending answer from a revised position. This is useful for dramatic monologues, moral dilemmas, and poems in which a speaker discovers the weakness of an initial certainty.
- Cycles in nature and daily life: Seasons, tides, sleep, work, migration, and homecoming can gain resonance from patterned departure and return. The form can emphasize continuity while the changing images show that no cycle repeats in precisely the same way.
- Secrets and divided identity: The inner lines can hold what an outward-facing voice tries to frame or contain. Contrasts between public diction and private imagery allow the structure to dramatize concealment, disclosure, or competing versions of the self.
Browse the poems in this collection with one shared theme in mind and notice how different writers transform it. Similar subjects may become tender, ironic, tense, meditative, or playful depending on rhyme emphasis, pacing, image, and the meaning assigned to the final return.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of enclosed rhyme is between containment and movement. Its sound pattern promises a return, yet a poem must still travel somewhere while that promise is pending. A technically recognizable draft may complete the expected echoes but leave the reader feeling that nothing has changed. A memorable one uses the interval to alter context: the middle introduces an image, admission, contradiction, or tonal disturbance that makes the closing sound mean differently from its opening counterpart. The structure then becomes an experience of departure and return rather than a decorative arrangement.
Editors tend to notice when form and subject exert pressure on each other. A poem about memory may let the delayed rhyme behave like recollection; a poem about confinement may make the enclosing sounds feel restrictive; a comic piece may exploit the reader's anticipation and deliver an unexpected final word. Syntax is crucial. If every line stops heavily at its rhyme, the poem can sound mechanical unless that boxed cadence serves the voice. If every rhyme is hidden by enjambment, the form may lose expressive presence. Strong work decides how audible the enclosure should be and adjusts stress, sentence movement, and diction accordingly.
Common weaknesses usually arise when rhyme begins making decisions that the poem itself has not earned. Forced inversion, vague filler, predictable rhyme partners, and explanatory endings reveal the scaffolding without creating a compelling interior. Another weakness is insufficient development: the central lines repeat the opening in different words, and the conclusion merely seals the repetition. Exactness cannot compensate for a missing turn. Conversely, novelty alone is not enough. An unusual rhyme should sharpen image, character, or tone rather than advertise the poet's ingenuity at the expense of coherence.
Individuality remains visible through the kinds of words a poet chooses to echo, the distance between sentence and line, the handling of silence, and the relationship among stanzas. One writer may create a polished frame; another may make the same pressure feel conversational, unstable, musical, or severe. Comparing multiple community poems develops judgment because it separates convention from artistic choice. Readers begin to hear which effects belong to the shared design and which belong to a particular imagination. Quality becomes apparent not through obedience alone, but through the sense that sound, thought, and feeling could not have reached this exact conclusion in quite the same way without the enclosure.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on a single impression of what enclosed rhyme can accomplish. Compare how poets handle the inward pull of the middle lines, the delayed outer echo, and the emotional force of return. When a poem holds your attention, leave a thoughtful comment about a specific image, turn, sound, or ending rather than offering praise alone.
Then try the form yourself. Choose material that benefits from being framed, draft toward a meaningful change, revise aloud, and publish your poem on PoetrySoup. Your interpretation can join the continuing conversation among writers who use the same enclosure to create very different experiences.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 1337 enclosed rhyme poems, offering many opportunities to compare voices, subjects, pacing choices, and approaches to sonic return. Across a collection of this size, readers can consider how poets follow established conventions, adapt them to suit a particular voice, or challenge expectations while preserving a recognizable sense of enclosure. Browsing widely provides a fuller picture than any single example can offer.
Enclosed Rhyme Categories
Definition | What is Enclosed Rhyme 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.