a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets”: №124
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 19 lines and an unorthodox rhyme-scheme is like a quartet with 6 members, though reproof is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
IS NOT this life akin to darkened room
where each of us must learn to dance
alone or life may grant to us the chance
some long-forgotten story to resume
we move together on floor that’s strewn
with furniture of winter happenstance
that in the budding spring of new romance
we’re charged to navigate as we attune
together, I to you and you to me
and both of us are guided by the hand
of music in the darkness we can’t see
but which comes in floods to meet us where we stand
washing o’er the scatterings of debris
and on the waves that glide above the sand
it lifts them up and bears them out to sea—
who raises up these tides by his command
who calls the tune and writes the melody?
when this spark between our hearts by us be fanned
into a lamp of flame perhaps we’ll see
