Ordinarily I don’t publish so much poetry at Theoria-press, and instead try to provide mostly essays with an odd poem or sonnet occasionally interspersed among them. But the Muse’s visits have outstripped my ability to keep pace with prose pieces so readers who prefer essays should peruse the archives of this site, which are replete with them. Also, I should acknowledge that the formal aspect of this “Petrarchan sonnet” is liberally conceived so it’s unnecessary to alert me that at “Petrarchan sonnet” with 16 lines is like a quartet with 5 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
OH frantic heart who, ordinarily, keeps a temperate rhythm, also temperate rhyme now extempore beats, and out of time in pell-mell pulsing, with erratic leaps its melodies are cast, jumbled in heaps that lack all measure, lack all paradigm no balanced tempo marked, no healthful chime its progress halted to circuitous creep but just as I was falling in despair a ship at sea the tempest will outface and like an eagle soaring in the air my heart regained its native clip and pace so now my heart sounds like a tabour fair and leads my inner orchestra with grace til the music in me becomes a prayer and every beat and note has found its place
The last 4 lines suggest to me that all our hearts in prayer can lead to harmony within and without
Some time age the topic of the Petrarchan form came up in a conversation and someone remarked that the sequence and rhyme structure reminded him of atrial fibrillation of the heart finally resolving into a coordinated pulse. The comparison intrigued me so I filed it away in the recesses of my mind until such time as the metaphor could bear fruit, and this was my attempt to capture it.