Pebble on the strand, none like you, looked at whole;
Though there are many similar in shape, both small and grand,
Tincture, texture, each unique, yet none of you the sole
Pebble on the strand.
Some other pebbles too have fine design while others bland,
All over grey, but all make up the beach and have a role,
Within the stippled picture of impressionistic brand;
But those multi-coloured whorls etched in your sea-shone surface stole
My heart so then, to feel your silken smoothness, I held you in my hand
And for one moment wondered: "Should you perhaps have been the sole
Pebble on the strand?"
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Author Notes
This poem is a Roundel, an eleven line French form. The line length and scansion are indeterminate. It is the rhyme scheme and the repetions of the lines and part lines that make up the form.
The first half of the first line (the last word of which forms the a of the scheme) is repeated at the end of the first and third stanzas. The first three lines of the first and last stanzas rhyme bab while the central tercet rhymes aba.
My initial reaction on first coming upon the form was to reject it as "form for form's sake" but, given the theme I had decided on here, I felt that the form reflected the content of a pebble beach, that looks at first sight so uninviting with all those similar stones repeating, until you realise that there are almost as many individual differences as there are pebbles or as there are rhyming words, even when limited to only two rhymes throughout.
The impressionist painters often used the stipple effect to create their impressions. Stand back from the picture and you see the whole thing; peer at it closely and you lose the gestalt, but see the detail of the amazing shapes and colours of the individual stiples.
I wanted to write "...the only pebble on the beach" to be in line with the well-known expression but 'only' played hell with scansion and I just could not find enough appropriate rhymes for 'beach'; hence I had to settle for ... sole pebble on the strand.
So the beach here is a metaphor for the whole of humanity and each pebble is an individual.
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