Late last fall I was out enjoying the seasons colors while walking along a lagoon at Lake Phalen in St. Paul, Minnesota. While crossing a footbridge I turned to look upstream and was confronted with this vision. At first I didn't know what it was. Then I realized that I was looking at the archway of the Frost Street Bridge reflected in the water, with tree branches obscuring the rest of the bridge. Luckily I had my camera with me. So, here's a poem describing that moment.

This poem is Boutonniere.
The Boutonniere seems to be an exercise in writing in catalectic trochaic meter. In other words, the stress comes first in each metric foot (trochee), but the last foot of the line, drops the last unstressed syllable (catalectic), so the poem starts and completes on a stressed syllable. Trochaic tetrameter would be described as a a series of stressed (S) and unstressed (u) syllables as follows: Su / Su/ Su/ Su (tetrameter, 8 syllables). Catalectic trochaic tetrameter would be Su/Su/Su/S (7 syllables). This format was created by Ann Byrnes Smith.

The Boutonniere is:
1. Written in 13 lines.
2. It is metered in catalectic trochaic tetrameter. Su/Su/Su/S.
3. Rhymed. The rhyme scheme is: A1,A2,bbcccbddd,A1,A2
4. Refrained, L1 is repeated as L12 and L2 is repeated as L13.
If you know me, you know I especially like the two sets of triple rhymes.

The picture was taken by the author himself on October 16, 2016.

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