Alfalfa

(An Octogram)
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Alfalfa blooms with bursting buds,

Purple and white.

Not the stuff of songs and ballads,

They still excite.

It’s often confused with clover.

If you closely look it over,

You’ll enjoy a delightful sight,

Purple and white.

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Frequently used farming methods:

Setting soil right,

Fine hay for horse feed and cow cuds,

They chew and bite.

Makes it a healthy forage food!

Their flowers set a lovely mood.

Alfalfa blooms with bursting buds,

Purple and white.

Author Notes

Another flower in my wildflower series.
Alfalfa is one of the oldest cultivated crops, but wild seeds have escaped and grown wild across the country side. Thought to have originated in ancient Iran, it is also known as Lucerne. Its classification is Medicago sativa, named in the fourth century AD by Roman write Palladius. The Medica handle came from the fact that a people called the Medes, lives in that region of Iran at the time. Today, it is used as the most nutritious hay to feed horses and cows. It is also used to balance soils through crop rotation.

This poem is an Octogram.

The Octogram is a style of poetry invented by Fanstorian Sally Yocom (S.Yocom). It consists of two stanzas of eight lines each, with a very specific syllable count and rhyme scheme.

Syllable count is 84848884, repeat on second stanza.

Rhyme scheme:ABabccbB ababddbB, where B repeats same text.

For this poem I changed it to ABabccbB ababddAB. No more than 16 lines.

The tempo is tetrameter on the 8 count line, and dimeter on the 4 count line, but not iambic.

I took this photograph on June 23,2013 while on a walk in the park with my wife.