Equinox 

1-
the day and gloam meet
subtle wafts of musky air,
leaves, weary of summer heat 
crisp, clinging tight where
parched sap chokes mid-limb, no life to spare

2-
pencils freshly sharp
notes of soft wood, shaved lead, tools
of learning the three R’s, art,
notebooks, college-ruled 
students, masked, head anxiously to school

3-
pumpkin that and this,
ad nauseam, morning brew
concoctions promising bliss 
at a price, it’s new
again, some wait all year, sad but true

4-
blink and time is gone
soft body, aching, graying,
dreams unrealized, nights long
and dark, days fading
winter coming soon, too soon, just saying

5- 
another harvest
wisdom gleaned from books and tears
choose your poison, leave the rest
the death we most fear…
not living life full while we are here

~kat

A new form, to me at least, lured me from hiding…actually, forced me from what has become the chaos of surviving. I paired it with my own creation, the horatiodet. Ode to my favorite season. 

The cadralor is a poem of 5, unrelated, numbered stanzaic images, each of which can stand alone as a poem, is fewer than 10 lines, and ideally constrains all stanzas to the same number of lines. Imagery is crucial to cadralore: each stanza should be a whole, imagist poem, almost like a scene from a film, or a photograph. The fifth stanza acts as the crucible, alchemically pulling the unrelated stanzas together into a love poem. By “love poem,” we mean that your fifth stanza illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: “For what do you yearn?” 
gogyoka

Horatiodet is a total of 5 lines, syllable count: 5-7-7-5-9 / rhyme scheme: ababb. In other words, it is a short Horatian Ode (only one stanza), a form based on the style of Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC), the leading Roman lyric poet.