a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan sonnets: №142
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. This is more-or-less an actual Petrarchan sonnet so it will not be preceded by my usual exculpatory disclaimer about having departed from the paradigmatic form.
WITH ALL THE words that pass between our souls first roughly hewn from timbers of the heart then planed and straightened through eternal art by which we smooth each knot and patch each hole the art that from the ancient gods we stole instructs us of the placement to compart each plank and board to also form a part and parcel of an over-hanging whole with every word we speak, we also build the house that you and I’ll one day indwell the beams and boards and rafters that we milled and sanded, bevelled, then joined parallel enclose a space that will one day be filled with love and everything shall then be well
This reminds me of the allegory that we can attain the mind of the Maker by examining the table he made, just as we can attain the mind of the Creator by examining his creation
Thank you Max for the sweet memories of building your own home. Our Quonset Hut had 1 inch thick red hickory walls. We were blessed to find an Elderly man that had this wood stashed in his old barn. It was his dream to do something with this hard wood, but his life got in the way. We gladly paid him for the wood and he knew we would also give him his dream. He came over once a week to look at his wood. It was meant to be ~~