Anniversary, a sonnet

In early February's grayness, bleak
with icy wind chill factors, roads to match;
depressive news besieging us with crime
and war and homelessness, I spend some time
remembering when love bloomed on my cheek:
a new forever love, a love unique,
I thought. Dame Fate inveigled me to snatch
you from a treadmilled, empty life, attach
myself. Your joviality refreshed
my soul--long steeped in silence. Bonded, meshed
in love, we wed amid red valentines,
those symbols cherished love defines, enshrines.
   While vicious winter plays its warring tune,
   I snuggle into memory's cocoon.

PL- 2004, published in Lucidity: A Journal of Verse, Spring, 1997

My first sonnet

Photo: Sister Carolyn Hoggard

I SOUGHT YOU LONG, O LOVE

 

Through mocking, taunting games of hide-and-seek,

you torture and delay. A challenged sleuth,

I search in crannies--vertical, oblique--

for angles, images. Like savage youth,

I rip apart the weedy, matted clumps

of phrases adequate another time.

Your shadow leads me further, over humps

of clichés, scrabbling for a word sublime.

Perhaps my efforts trample fragile seed.

Oh, accents, meter, rhyme, emerge now from

your hiding place. Give up. No more impede

my crazed, frenetic goal to pen a psalm.

   The chase was long--through bramble, thicket, thorn.

   The prize is won: a sonnet newly born.

 

--PL, from variations, 1994

To my friends this Valentine's season: a sonnet

My brother Guy Couch's begonia

 

 A Sonnet to my Valentines

T  o celebrate this holiday, I’ll try

O  utlining, crafting English sonnet form.
 

M  y further, harder task will be to tie

Y  et other undertakings to it: warm
 

V  ernacular, like choc-o-late, plus rhyme

A  nd meter (dull iambic, some folks think).

L  a-bor-ious it may be, this winter. But,

E  ach word must serve to build and fill a chink.

N  eglectful, some folks overlook a “turn”

T  he sonnet needs. For now, I’ll turn to snow,

I  de-al during February. Spurn

N  ot cold; delight in its short visit! Oh,

E  lusive muse, Erato–– Valentine,

S  tay with us, love us––snow or not.   Be mine!

 

c 2015 Pat Laster dba lovepat press