Royce's Choice Poem by Reason A. Poteet

a saraband

Folks show'ring her with potpourri,
sweet Sallie starts her odyssey
dancing up the aisle t'wards me.
The vows all said 'mid candles glow,
we kiss, sashaying down the row.
The cleric shouts with lifted voice
'I give you, Todd and Sarah Royce.'

A hundred days in this romance
has found my wife with looks askance.
Her first love is, of course, the dance.
I twist, I step to reappraise
this waltz through life in cabarets.
She cancans while I play the 'bone;
we move this way apart, alone.

Watching her with dance technician,
ascertaining her ambition
off'ring little opposition
I yield divorce to Roger Band -
who grabs the chance for Sallie's hand.
Thus Royce's choice, a power play
for Sarah Band - dance protégé.

The sarabande was a dance form in triple (3/4) time popular in the 18th/19 centuries. The saraband 3-4) is a poetic form based on a tercet (3 lines) followed by a quatrain (4 lines) . Rhyming patterns are tercet (a, a, a) or (a, x, a) and the quatrain (b, c, b, c) (b, c, c, b) or (b, b, c, c) . Usually there are 8 syllable lines but not always.