From Saudi dunes we come to understand
that light plays tricks upon the desert sand.
As heat haze shimmers and the landscape sears,
a lawrence of Arabia appears.
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Author Notes
This is a decasyllabic quatrain in iambic pentameter, also known as a heroic or elegiac quatrain. Although some sources (https://www.britannica.com/art/heroic-stanza) state that heroic stanzas should be of the rhyme scheme ABAB, other sites (http://www.literarydevices.com/quatrain/) permit AABB, AABA and ABCB, among others. Doubtless, Omar Khayyam and Robert Frost would be pleased to hear that.
Today's word: lawrence (n.) a shimmering heat haze.
Although my poem cheekily refers to Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), that is not where the term lawrence to describe the desert phenomenon comes from. It has its origins in Lawrence of Rome, an archdeacon who was roasted to death in 258 AD for refusing to hand over the church's assets to Emperor Valerian.
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
Thanks for reading.
Picture: By Columbia Pictures [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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