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 “sonnet” is liberally conceived so it’s unnecessary to alert me that at “sonnet” with 16 lines is like a quartet with 5 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
THE LILIES of the field that laugh and sway
when tickled by the wafting summer breeze
that jaunts and ambles up and down the day:
they neither toil nor reap but live at ease
each one knows its appointed task and season
like little children know their poems by heart
and declare them without guile or reason
and so achieve perfection of their art
but I alone must labor and must strive
my choicest phrases seem like so much straw
and when a pair of verses I contrive
forgetting blows and scatters them abroad
and all that’s left is the will to start anew
to sprinkle upon everything I do
in time my mind will recompose, renew
by the same power by which the flowers grew
Max, this is a masterpiece in the short era of the midsummer solstice. You seem to recognize your own constraint, and yet, seeing that self-conscious beholding will soon overtake us again, give this parable. Every line is something to consider, like the "lilies of the field". Comes interesting when we are considering Steiner's OOS, which can appear so austere.
The essence of flowers are a higher beholding of the relationship between the human soul and the soul of the world struggling to overcome something in its environment... the flower of a plant is a manifestation of its triumph to overcome struggle or dysfunction. =) Thank you, Max -your poems are uniquely relevant and always touch my heart.