A-going August Sonneteering

It’s not been a psychologically sound summer for me. It’s not anything clinical but I just haven’t been myself. It all began in the spring. April was great. I went walking every day and wrote blog posts while giving up poetry. So that when the poems came in May, they felt fresh. But I came down with some kind of stomach thing, nothing too serious, but enough (and for six weeks or so) to throw me off-center. And although I’ve since healed physically (for the most part), I haven’t mentally. Which really is a crock, considering those among us who really are ill. So, I pushed myself out for a walk tonight and decided to dedicate myself to do so every day in some way or manner and write a sonnet about it. Oh, these won’t be the formal kind, although some may be. But they’ll have 14 lines. I’m just not reaching for iambic pentameter in some kind of rhyme scheme. Although they won’t exactly be Berrigan-like either.

Sonnet August One

Dear Skye; I walked into August tonight—it’s wild!
There’s no wonder summer has to end; imagine
if it didn’t. We’d all be pistil-whipped
by lashes of Queen Anne’s Lace or overwhelmed
by awe. Speaking of which, while walking I saw
forty or so barn swallows—you know the bird—
it’s not the Capistrano kind, still it’s cool—
it’s small with swept-back wings like a stealth bomber—
well they were swarming in a congregation—
well more like indecisive shoppers in
a mall flitting back and forth from store
to store—a choreographed chaotic dance
of natural construct which always threatened to
get out of order but somehow never did.

~Son Rivers 2005