(Not Quite) Just like Rabbie Burns

I found a blog through another blog that led me to this teacher blog, the Miss Rumphius Effect. I figure I can at least keep my teacher brain active by reading what other teachers say.  Each Monday, she presents a "Poetry Stretch" in which she challenges her readers to try a particular poetry form or topic. This week's challenge was to create a "Rictameter"-a non-rhyming poem of 9 lines in which the first and last line are the same. The trick is that there's a certain requirement for the syllable count of each line: 2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2.

So, I figured that, since I had just come from the land of Robert Burns, maybe I'd take a page from his book (not really, they were encased in glass at the Writer's Museum) and take the poetry-writing challenge this week.

So, here goes:

Scotland.
Spent two days in
Edinburgh*, where we
followed a Royal foot path from
the castle to Holyroodhouse and scaled
Scott's Monument to get a view
of this old and charming
city, star* of
Scotland.

*1-remember to pronounce Edinburgh the right way, Edin-burrah, not Edin-berg, to make the syllables work! And to sound like you know your stuff!
*2-I'm going to pat myself (and my AP English teacher, Ms. Frye) on the back here because I think I am so darn clever as Edinburgh is the capital and a star is the symbol for a capital city on a map!