A Sonnet a Day

A few years ago I was captivated by Stephen Fry’s Book The Ode Less Travelled, Unlocking the Poet Within.  His gently self-deprecating admission “I write poetry” gave me permission to explore something I’ve loved but not dared to take seriously.   At his wry suggestion, I dedicated a journal and started doing the exercises he presents, such as:  “Write five pairs of blank iambic pentameter. . . To make it easier I will give you a specific subject for all five pairs. 1. Precisely what you hear and see outside your window; 2. Precisely what you’d like to eat, right this minute. . . .”

I found I greatly enjoyed working with meter, rhyme, and meaning.  Later I came to love poetry with partial rhyme and subtle meter - where the images might take me first but then I would notice how the sounds rocked me.  So at the end of November, at a lightening of other duties, I took it upon myself to write a sonnet a day - not to be profound but just to hone my craft.  Today I share one in response to my friend Kathleen Noble’s post on loneliness:

Loneliness

How quickly all the flurry settles down

The waves recede, the foam evaporates

In sudden quiet, here I am alone

No partner, cohort, no collective state

It is a lie, of course, this isolation

My family’s here, although in different rooms

They care for me and hold me in relation

I haven’t really wandered off in gloom

And though I feel I’ve drawn the circle small

So few who know me, few who care I’m here

Another view would show me one with all

Would make my contribution strong and clear

It’s just an artifact of how I’m seeing

Succumbing to the void, or brightly being.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2011