a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (55)
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 15 lines is like a quartet with 5 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
THESE verses lifted from the stream of time
and placed with care upon the page to dry
like flowers pressed and hung up on the sky
sung through by a gentle breeze of rhyme
garnered in the midday height and prime
and meted by the sunlit fields of rye
so word by word and verse by verse to tie
into a raft of speech to bear the mind
and turn the mind about to realms unseen
to boundless seas of uncreated light
and place first foot upon distant demesne
not known and never fathomed, unbedight,
unornamented by the Fairy Queen
who, with a wink and nod, now takes to flight
having failed to cast her spell upon our sight
