a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (54)

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.

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BEFORE us, figures walk and sometimes run
phenomena arise and pass away
o’er whose procession certain laws hold sway
as on a woven fabric, warp begun,
arrayed like rows of corn in autumn sun
or fresh-ploughed fields in April day
receptive to be sown and sprout in May.
so is sewn the weft from thread first spun
in some other world, still to us unknown
intimated in visions and in dreams
the substance of all we’ve ever sewn
the thread that holds together at the seams
the only world that we have ever known
where all we see is how the world seems
in the light that’s shed by the Moon’s pale beams

Photo by nousnou iwasaki on Unsplash