a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (61)

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 is like a quartet with 7 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.

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I WEND my way amid this ghostly wood
those sculpted monuments the land produced
the trees and saplings that the Spring induced
cedars, pines, and poplars that withstood
the onslaught of the frost and cold that would
less stout and hardy crops have fast reduced
to corpses withered, bands of spirit loosed
to haunt the groves and glades in which we stood
yet still these strapping trees still could not withstand
the trick that Fortune had for them in store
there you stood, with vacant eye and match in hand
I called, to no avail did I implore
so watched the hungry tongues of flame expand
smoke for helm, and terrible like the god of war
and terrible like the passing grains of sand
that through the glass of hours slip and pour
for fire is time, flames are fingers on time’s hand
now the forest that we planted is no more
for time consumes...but can it too restore?