a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan sonnets: №184

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.

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A-PERCHED UPON the threshold of the day 
my head abloom with labyrinthine scenes
in fits and starts my dreaming soul careens
and tumbles through the images and fray
she finds no room or quarter she can stay
and too, no sense or moral she can glean,
until at once, the dreamscape scoured clean,
I wake to find my love has gone away
away she’s gone, and taken all her things,
and left alone remembrance to compart
each cord—and serve as anchor-point to string
upon the bridge of distance—of my heart;
my heartstrings stretched and tuned so they can sing
a plangent ballad, sadness turned to art

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