AND, Poetry Is Medicine for the Soul!

       First time I've been asked to take a pill in the form of a "troche" (TRO-key).  The medicine is identified as "White, Round-shaped Tablet (Flat-faced)."  Shape and size of a dime, in fact.   The word comes ultimately from Greek trekhein=to run, which gave birth to trokhos, wheel, and thence trokhiskos, meaning little wheel, which fits the tablet I'm dissolving in my mouth five times daily for awhile.

       But why my slight unease still with "troche"?  Yes, it's that metrical foot in poetry too, spelled "trochee,"  a stressed and an unstressed syllable, the meter called "trochaic":   for example,  "Should you ask me / Whence these stories / Whence these Legends and traditions....." from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.   It must have been perceived as a rolling meter; hence the name "trochaic."

       A medicine and a poetic meter, both running on "little wheels."