The Thoughtful Fonio-grain is a reflective poetic form, originating in The Focal Systems. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is divided into three distinct parts: a series of quintains, a quatrain and another series of quatrains. Use of assonance is characteristic of the form. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often contrast underlying meaning and they have similar grammatical structures.