Gallop

Cherry tilted her head. "My friend Count keeps the syllable count," she said. "How is your bounce different from his counting?"

"Count tells you how many beats there are," Gallop said. "I tell you which ones to stomp." He demonstrated. "Take a limerick. Count would tell you the lines are short-short-shorter-shorter-short. But the fun of a limerick isn't the number. It's the gallop." And he bounced out a rhythm:

da-da-DUM da-da-DUM da-da-DUM — strong, rollicking, like a horse cantering downhill.

Cherry felt her own foot start tapping. The bounce was contagious. She saw it at once: counting syllables was something you did in your head, but meter was something you felt in your body. The stress pattern made the words want to be spoken aloud, made them dance.

"The limerick galloped its way out of the English and Irish tradition," Cherry noted, honoring where the bouncing form came from. "We name its home, the way we name the home of every form we learn." Gallop dipped his head; he liked that Cherry always said where a rhythm came from.

Cherry asked Gallop to travel with her. "I coach children in counted poems," she said, "and their limericks come out flat — all the right syllables, none of the bounce. I think they need to feel the gallop, not just count it."

Gallop reared up happily. "Oh, I'd love that! I'll teach them to bounce!" And he cantered a joyful circle, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, just to show he meant it.

So Gallop joined Cherry's travels, and the limericks in her lessons started to bounce.

When Cherry teaches meter, Gallop leads — usually by getting the whole class moving. "Don't just count the beats," he tells them, hooves rolling. "Feel which ones are strong. Clap the loud ones. Stomp the DUMs." He has them say a limerick while marching to his gallop, leaning hard on every third beat. da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM. And suddenly their flat little poems came alive and bouncing.

A young student's limerick had all the right syllables but read like a grocery list. Gallop had her say it again, stomping the strong beats with him. The same words, ridden on the gallop, turned funny and lively and impossible not to grin at. "You didn't change a single word," Gallop said. "You just found the bounce that was hiding in them."

"And here's the thing to remember," he added, settling his hooves. "Not every form gallops. A haiku doesn't bounce like a limerick — it has its own quieter rhythm. Each form has its own walk. My job is to help you feel which walk a poem wants. Some trot. Some gallop. Some stroll slow and still. Find the walk, and the words will carry you."