NaPoWriMo Day 8: Ghazal on scarlet

Hi, I decided to do the NaPoWriMo Challenge, where you write a poem a day from prompts, but I've missed 7 days already! So, here I am on day 8, being challenged to write a love ghazal. So here goes. If you wanna join in, here's the website: www.napowrimo.net. It's an awesome site, full of poetry and prompts. You can read everyone's poems over the month too. 

Prompt: 

The ghazal (pronounced kind of like “huzzle,” with a particularly husky “h” at the beginning) is a form that originates in Arabic poetry, and is often used for love poems. Ghazals commonly consist of five to fifteen couplets that are independent from each other but are nonetheless linked abstractly in their theme; and more concretely by their form. And what is that form? In English ghazals, the usual constraints are that:
-- the lines all have to be of around the same length (though formal meter/syllable-counts are not employed); and
-- both lines of the first couplet end on the same word or words, which then form a refrain that is echoed at the end of each succeeding couplet.

Now try writing your own ghazal that takes the form of a love song – however you want to define that. Observe the conventions of the repeated word, including your own name (or a reference to yourself) and having the stanzas present independent thoughts along a single theme – a meditation, not a story.

Ghazal on scarlet
 
It’s a meditation on a distanced time and place,
a conversation in a crowd, a sometime place.
 
A connection that wasn’t written on any wall,
unanticipated, walked into, kinda out of place.
 
Was it this venue or that, or another entirely?
The detail doesn't count. It could be any place.
 
On our first date we shot some pool. Don’t know
if you let me win or even the name of that place.
 
The only thing I remember well is that we met
& somehow we were always back at your place.
 
A passionate whirlwind, kind of all-consuming,
but never too much. Nothing out of place.
 
You let me be who I was, never tried to change me,
proudly took me to all your favourite places.
 
You set out your stall sometimes; I didn’t have to.
If you weren’t there it felt a little like no place.
 
But we were young & it couldn’t burn forever.
I was not enough & suddenly I felt out of place.
 
But looking back now I remember the energy
& how for a while we were in the right place.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 8, 2025