All right, Adam. I spent the last hour writing this because you said it didn't mattter how many stanzas there were in a viator. Stop saying things like that!

TAKE ONLY THAT WHICH COMES

Take only that which comes when it may come.
Seek not to push too hard upon your Muse.
Accept that not each verse will be a plum 
or any sort of gem that you can use.
For there will be some times when every crumb 
of everything you write seems to confuse.

The hardest thing for me to learn was just
take only that which comes when it may come.
It took awhile for me to learn to trust 
the well that I took inspiration from 
and accept that sometimes it’s a bust, 
that everything I write just seems so dumb.

Now and then the prospects seem so glum
that I forget to take my own advice.
“Take only that which comes when it may come.”
I push and prod to make it all precise
when I’d be better served by keeping mum.
And every time I do I pay the price.

So I am forced to scrap what I’ve composed, 
to recognize that what I wrote is rum 
and bring to mind the rule that I’ve proposed:
“Take only that which comes when it may come.”
Then with my battered vanity exposed 
I can come full circle and succumb

to that little phrase, that Rule of Thumb 
that guides me such that when I’ve gotten through
I wind up with a piece that’s got some hum,
that makes me happy I decided to
take only that which comes when it may come.
A lesson that was long, long overdue.

If you should want perfection in each line,
I don’t think I’m the proper source, old chum,
for sage advice to help your musings shine.
But if you want to write more than just “…um…”
remember these few words and you’ll be fine:
take only that which comes when it may come.

writer

Thank you for sharing yours here, Adam... and for the further discussion!

It's my impression that the form didn't exactly take off during his time or since, so I should think we might do whatever we like with it.  But then I've been known to do anathema things to various poetic forms in my experimentation.

I personaly would have no difficulty with your writing a poem of 5 or 6 or 7 or 8.... +  lines so long as the line travels respectively between the cars and doesn't cause a derailment!

deLightedly, Daniel  

Thanks, Wayne.  Actually, literarius introduced this form to me from here.  I'd never noticed Scotty's posting this previously, so I just revised it a little after doing a little research.  You did a great job.  I hope literarius will post here too!

deLighting in the fun with you, Daniel 

Though Viator I Am

Though viator I am, you see
I travel neither land nor sea
but through the stanzas on a page
else his old fingers would assuage.

They'd write far more (twixt you and me);
though viator I am, you see,
he doesn't like to read too much
between the lines, but keep in touch

with what's been scribbled out before
lest he forget and drift offshore,
though viator.  I am, you see,
his safety-line, on the Q-T.

He's stingy, but he comes around;
it's 'cause o' me that he ain't drowned.
He never will a trav'ler be,
though viator.  I am, you see.

_{© MLee Dickens'son 13 Nov 2008}

This form was created by British-born Canadian poet and scholar Robin Skelton, the author of ‘The Shapes of Our Singing.’

Simply, it is a poem consisting usually of four stanzas in which the 1st line of the 1st stanza travels through the poem moving to the 2nd line in the 2nd stanza and so on until the poem's fourth stanza ends with the line with which the first began.   Viator is the Latin name for traveller.

Innocence

As she dreams of returning to innocence,
her daily commute on the rail begins.
She blends in with all the rest
while hiding behind the morning news.

The headlines scream war.
As she dreams of returning to innocence,
she sees a man knife another for a nickel bag.
One’s left dying – blood running red.

Slowly, she joins the throng 
disgorging through the chutes,
as she dreams of returning to innocence,
up the stairs, out into the light,

Many moles squinting into the sun;
they begin their choreographed dash,
resembling lemmings scuttling to the sea,
as she dreams of returning to innocence.

Take care.

alien