The Last Frontier
by ALAN OCHELTREE JR.
The sun drops low, under the winter’s snow
All goes dark as stars fill up the night’s sky
Our moon peaks up, giving off a subtle glow
Off in the distance is an Owl’s cry
As it spreads its wings and starts to fly
Trees once green, covered in frozen cotton
Wide open land, peacefully forgotten.
*The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a terza rima and two couplets (a-b-a, b-b, c-c) or a quatrain and a tercet (a-b-a-b, b-c-c). This allows for a good deal of variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems; and along with the couplet, it was the standard narrative metre in the late Middle Ages.