My Very First Paradelle

So I was reading Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins, a collection of new and selected poems because it contains The Night House from Picnic, Lightning, which contains the most memorable image from a poem for me ever. Referring to the heart, mind, conscience and soul just before waking:

Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree...

Flipping AWESOME! Totally WICKED!

So then I came across this other poem called Paradelle for Susan, and thought, what the heck is a paradelle? Lucky for me he added this explanatory note:

A paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. [Whatever that is.] It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be indentical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.

Thusly was the challenge set before me to write my very first paradelle, which I now present to you, gentle readers. I am most proud.

Paradelle for Mr. Karin

_

Sitting in the rising sun, longing for a drink

Sitting in the rising sun, longing for a drink

A family of sunflowers waves from nextdoor,

A family of sunflowers waves from nextdoor.

A family from next door, rising, sitting in the sun

Waves, longing for a drink of sunflowers.

_

A black creature bounds through the grass.

A black creature bounds through the grass.

Not a cat, it hops to me and nibbles, just as shy and allergic as you are.

Not a cat, it hops to me and nibbles, just as shy and allergic as you are.

You are allergic to me, just as the black grass,

And a cat hops, not nibbles. It shy.

_

Go away! Come back! My inarticulate dance.

Go away! Come back! My inarticulate dance.

You only sit still for a moment.

You only sit still for a moment.

A still moment, you dance away.

You only come back for my inarticulate, "Sit...go."

_

Drink in the shy sun, just for a moment.

Sit still not as a creature hops, nibbles through black grass,

As you are rising, longing for inarticulate me.

My dance waves and bounds back, sunflowers of sitting.

You come away from a family and the cat nextdoor

Only, allergic to it, go, "a...a...a!"

_

_

A note about process: I wrote the first three stanzas while, as you can guess, sitting in the sun in my back yard. The first four lines of each stanza are fairly easy to assemble, while the final two lines really take some mental effort. That's the fun part, trying make sure to get in all the words. When it came to the final stanza; however, notecards, pencil and scissors were called for, as I am quite visual and kinesthetic. I proceded to write down each word of the poem in rows on index cards. Then I cut them out, in the breeze-free indoors, word by word so that I could move them around the table, rearranging as seemed appropriate and delightful until I arrived at the poem you see above.