A Pocket Full of
Posies
We hold each others’ hands and sing,
“O ring around the rosie...swing!”
We love to play this silly game.
I wonder where it got its name.
Was plague the meaning of the thing?
We hold each others’ hands and sing.
A pocket full of posies will
(at least to us) mean nothing ill.
So, ashes…and we all fall down
in sailor suit or dainty gown.
We hold each others’ hands and swing:
we’re healthy as we’re chorusing
a ditty that’s been passed on from
a middle-age compendium.
That is the thought to which we’ll cling.
We hold each others’ hands and sing.
###
Notes: The form is Quatern. Sepia Saturday provided a prompt this week of 'games' along with a vintage snapshot of some lovely Korean ladies playing a game called 'Go.' The original archival picture was really cool, and if I have time over the weekend, I will try to write a poem for that too. But at first blush, I had the idea in my head of old-fashioned little kids playing 'Ring-A-Round the Rosie,' and when I found the above tinted photograph, my poem really began to take shape.
Although the children's nursery rhyme 'Ring-A-Round the Rosie' is believed to be (by some) about the bubonic plague in Europe from the mid 1300s, according to Snopes, it really isn't so. I'm kind of glad, since I'd rather it be innocent...although it's fun when you find nursery rhymes of old that were used to convey other, secret meanings. Kind of like a game, huh?
