Chesham, England -- a Chant Royal poem-in-progress for Mindful Poetry

Chesham, England
Fifty miles outside of London

Protected under glass desk-plate
Happy snapshots, a yellowed postcard
Spent bus pass, 1944
A child’s spelling test, graded and starred
So many memories prudently charted
But that was long ago, it’s not anymore
Amnesia-like, no one speaks of those days
Instead they toe the charred parquet
Tears spring as if the smoke still smarted
Out loud at least they daren’t replay
In this room, the fire started

Our world resembled the fourth estate
For us, the adults held little regard
Slipped into fantasy, imaginations soar
No eye batted when we quit the yard
Raced to the cellar, dug into uncharted
Hidey-holes. As kids, our temporal world we ignored
When a child is left to his own displays,
His mind goes a-calling, no longer obeys
Wicked, not us, though our prudence had parted
Come anon, we crafted our finest foray
In this room, the fire started

Fast forward sixty years: clean slate
Yet hints of loss, a splintered shard
Whispered talk of the darkened door
Always the neck of Aunt Mimi scarred
But we press our lips and act bighearted
We lift our chins to underscore
How good life is, there’s no malaise
And with a dab of feminine clay
On Mimi’s neck, wisely imparted
There’s surely nothing to convey
In this room, the fire started

The children look at my neck agape
Then touch theirs as if to guard
Their own slim stems from a secret horr’r
Good ol’ Aunt Mimi, their senses jarred,
Story’s not for the dispirit-hearted
My tale, it stays inside my head, lest I bore
Our guests away, bore our guests away.
Though the truth it is not told, my eyes betray
Memory’s weight of my cousins departed
As if I see a ghost, I avert my gaze
In this room, the fire started

We were only children, in total eight
Running tag and ball-bombard
Then we’d play house, build tents galore
Or even rescue with our St. Bernard
Troubles were distant as we darted
But while we sipped tea, in came the war
A hand-grenade left room ablaze
Pop’s country farm a war-zone maze
Our innocence could never be restarted
Mummy found me in a daze
In this room, the fire started

We watch Aunt Mimi now old and gray
Her moving lips silently pray
For her dear mates who were all carted
Up to heaven while she had to stay
In this room, where the fire started

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How I managed to write this lengthy, rhyme-specific poem:

I wrote out my first stanza at whim and managed to keep track of when a rhyme should appear. Then I created a list of the ending words and typed them in as a column as you can see here:
Plate
card
four
card
started
four
day
day
started
day
STARTED

I copied and pasted the column four more times vertically. Now I had my list of target rhyme-word at the beginning of each line so that I’d have a quick reference of how I needed to end the line.

I also pasted the column of terminal words at the top of my page. After each word, I compiled a list of all the rhyming words for each of my target words.

I added this for reference:  a-b-c-b-e-c-d-d-e-d-E
1a-plate, 2-4b-card, 3-6c-four, 7-8-10d-day, 5-9-11e-started

As I wrote the poem, I’d erase the rhyming word from my compiled list as it was used so I wouldn’t mistakenly use it twice in the poem.

When I’d finished my first draft, I went back –on another day— and worked on the meter and line length.