Merry Month of May

May is the merriest month of the year,
The time to celebrate your mother’s love,
And send her a bright bouquet of cheer.

May is the month of gardens and flowers,
Mother Nature wears her prettiest green,
Clouds pile up in beautiful white towers,
Against a natural blue movie screen.

May is the time of rejoicing and praise,
Of planning vacations to distant lands,
And asking your boss for your yearly raise.

May is the month of Maypoles and dancing,
The universe is joyfully laughing,
Celebrating the merry month of May,
Creation commemorates Mother’s Day.

Line Count: 14

Form: Saraband Sonnet based on a dance form and introduced in Spain in the 1700s. It is a four-stanza poem alternating between 3-line Tercet stanzas and 4-line quantrain stanzas. The lines are composed of either iambic tetrameter or pentameter. Stanzas one and three are tercet stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a-x-a, where the second line does not have to rhyme with any other line or it can rhyme with line two in the third stanza. Stanzas two and four are quantrains with rhyme schemes of b-b-c-c, b-c-b-c, b-c-c-b, or any combination thereof. Meter is tetrameter, which is 8 syllables of 4 iambic or trochaic feet, or pentameter, which is 10 syllables of 5 iambic or trochaic feet.