Q & A

I asked the question recently, via Facebook, whether anyone could tell me the name of the poetic rhyme pattern I'd used that works inwards, from each end, towards the middle, in an abcdef fedcba pattern.

The answer, it seems, is Chiasmic. 

A Chiasmic poem has a structure composed around a Chiasmus: the lines of the text are symmetrical, in that lines one and 12 rhyme, as do lines two and 11, three and 10, etc., until they converge in the the middle with lines six and 7.

Blackbird, is an example of this.

BLACKBIRD

With catapult, once school was finished,

I went to hunt in woodland, high

above Belfast, in summer light

and heard, among leafed branches spread,

a blackbird, singing like a bell.

I took aim, shot; the missile flew

unerringly, my aim was true.

with awful suddenness it fell,

all broken. Exultation fled,

to be replaced by sickly fright.                                                                                          

I knelt to watch it slowly die.

Within me somewhere, light diminished.