Scented Love (DODOITSU)

by Bob Shank   Oct 7, 2015


Tis' a flower we have picked
"she loves me she loves me not"
the silly game we all played
missing the fragrance....

Bob Shank

The Dodoitsu is a fixed folk song form of Japanese
origin and is often about love or humor. It has 26
syllables made of of four lines of 7, 7, 7, 5 syllables
respectively. It is unrhymed and non-metrical.

2


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Latest Comments

  • 9 years ago

    by Darren

    That last line....

    how often do we miss the fragrance in everything, too wrapped up in our own selfish lives to see a bigger picture.
    To describe the game as silly makes us see that this was just a destructive act of picking a flower and pulling it apart.

    great poem
    like the form and I will attempt one myself soon

    nominated

  • 9 years ago

    by Britt

    This is really beautiful. All about the next step without taking a moment to breathe in the beauty of the present. Love the phrasing, especially in your first line.

  • 9 years ago

    by BlueJay

    Wow, I am not good with writing formed poetry, but I really like it when other people can pull of form, and you definitely pulled form off well.

    I love the play on the children's saying (I use the description of children's loosely). It works very well with the form and illuminates the beautiful flavor of the sad note at the end about a missing fragrance. I think that that really adds your emotional tone without out right saying how you feel - something that is typically hit or miss, and you did well there.

    Beautifully penned and definitely worth the nomination. Good luck.

  • 9 years ago

    by Everlasting

    Ah, I can't say I understood the message in its entirely.
    But don't they say, that it's best to not pick a flower or pull it out from the ground? That then it dies faster? That its best to let the flower grow and bloom, and overall, to just watch it's beauty unfold as it blooms before our eyes. Yet once the flower has bloom, to still let it stay in the ground... And let the petals fall one by one, but we pretty much accelerate the process of the flower dying by just pulling that flower out of the ground and starting to pull the petals one by one, just because we are playing that silly game of "does he loves me or not?". Instead of talking to that someone about it. And in the process of pulling out the petals, we are so concern to know if he loves me or not, that we miss out on smelling the Rose, pretty much, we miss out on having a new experience by just spending more time with that someone and talking about it. I supposed that could be the fragrance... Sorry, I have a weird way of understanding things. I usually just ramble.

    Thanks for sharing.

  • 9 years ago

    by Cindy

    Another great piece.
    Take care Cindy