Glossing over a Glose/Glosa

Today's poetry prompt suggests a "glosa," which Robert Lee Brewer of Writer's Digest describes in this way:

The glose or glosa is an interesting Spanish form that reminds me a bit of the golden shovel or cento. The basic premise is that you quote four lines of poetry as an epigraph from another poem or poet. These four lines act as a refrain in the final line of the four stanzas written by the poet. So the first line of the epigraph would be the final line of the first stanza, the second line ends the second stanza, etc.

The most common convention is for each of these stanzas to be ten lines in length. There are no other hard and fast rules for rhymes or syllables, though line length is usually consistent within the poem (so the epigraph kind of sets the line length).

I pulled four lines from one of my favorite poets, Deryn Rees-Jones.  Her "Persephone," begins:

Some days it is simple,

the way outside turns to inner -

the fall towards light,

the pull of the weather.

The lines don't seem particularly flashy,  I know. But there is this beautiful understated voice, meter and music in her work that I really adore. The glosa I wrote is not much more than a short exercise - certainly not ten lines per stanza, at this point. But it's a start and every day that I write when I think I can't, the frequency of that doubt diminishes. Tonight, I am suffering from a headache that stared more than 24 hours ago. And yet, I wrote something.