For Sonnnets’ Sake

Ceremony

The kettle boils with bubbly hiss and click,
The water pours with warm and curling steam,
The practiced sound of stirring, neat and quick,
Makes fragrance waft and everything just seem

So comfortable, easy, quiet, tranquil,
And words pour calm and soothing from the pot,
The anxious, asking feelings now are still,
When even silence doesn’t seem a stop.

The time spent is as delicate as each
Fragile cup that contains the dainty brew,
The conversation does however reach
Deeper places than fine china can do.

And this has now become ceremony,
And I can say it suits me to a tea.

 
The Three Sonneteers

I sit here writing sonnets by the score,
The words demand to fall at every stage,
The very lines insist that I write more,
I let them tumble out upon the page.

The form is adamant that I should try
To make an argument with poetry,
And follow every rule and dot each i,
And polish every verse and cross each t.

I think of other writers at this time,
How Bill so blithely ruled and wrote to start,
And how innately writers seek to rhyme,
And how elusive now can seem the art.

But yet there is a pleasure in the rules,
That even in the breaking, still fulfils.

 
The Game

Fervently I believe poetry a game,
A cheeky, wicked game to play on word,
That people think romantic all the same,
But I know can be joyously absurd.

It’s all about the music of the line,
The sound and pattern of the words that fall
To wrestle with the metre and the rhyme,
To make it to the volta point at all.

Once there though, the poem is almost done,
And you are proudly on the homeward stretch,
The artistry you want is nearly won,
And Shakespeare is a mewling measly wretch.

But here’s the secret I will gently tell,
The real art is sonneteering well.