Poetry Porch 2: Poetry

Sonnet Sequence 
by Joyce Wilson

 

Sonnet 2
Sonnet 3
Sonnet 4
Sonnet 5
Contriving Blue

 

Sonnet 2
by Joyce Wilson

Bold, brave, and strong, perhaps in haste,
I draw you close, announcing by decree
That all these years with you have seen no waste
But only luscious love, and I am free.

Disappointments, shabby and outgrown,
Have disappeared and gone where none redeems;
We can sleep unbothered, while the drone
Of working bees augments our season’s dreams.

And yet, to see joy break, a dawning sun
On furrows in your face, and warm its hills,
Would freeze my heart like the specter of a gun,
Barrel and trigger drawn, for cheaper thrills.

I know my love and loss of leverage,
Which a woman sorely needs at my age.

(Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Wilson.)

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Sonnet 3
by Joyce Wilson

Some say days prolonged by death and war
Induce the need for love, as if the years—
Those empty hours!—unarmed can only bore
And breed despair, the awful mundane fears.

Since Viet Nam, we have lived together
Many uneventful days of peace
Hostage to a foul internal weather
Where head and heart imagine precipice.

This afternoon, while holding off the flu
I push this pen, precipitate a fight
As inside would what outside does not do,
Dismantle all we’ve earned and travel light.

When we fear the wars will never end
We hold each other close, and peace defend.

(Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Wilson.)

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Sonnet 4
by Joyce Wilson

Seldom have you trespassed on my heart;
I thought you understood from this our love
My fragile treasury, where heavens start
And finish in the wing-beat of a dove.

To live with you was never to ask how
A tenant will presume the power to bargain;
Though who knew then what we alone know now
That like a landlord you alone were sovereign.

You never forced your way, yet I seem owned
When you smile there above, the victor proved.
But what fair queen has never known, though crowned,
The defenseless side of love and being loved?

In the glass, I assess my placid face and groan,
Saying: you idiot, you should have known.

(Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Wilson.)

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Sonnet 5
by Joyce Wilson

In sum, our love would garner but a speck
In the book of worldly wealth. Nonchalant,
We met and loved, submitted every check.
We bought a house that no one else would want.

As if we feared the envy of the gods
We put our stock in kale and devoted
Days and hours to worrying loose sods.
At night we slept subdued and comforted.

Empowered pawns, we follow, betrothed
By duty and borne along unknown this far.
The world will never praise the life we lived
Unless we nominate a hill or star.

Instead, we raise a child, named in this,
Although I can’t be sure she serves for us.

(Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Wilson.)

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Contriving Blue
by Joyce Wilson

At first, we loved, two grouse engrossed
With no more thought than one for two
And spent our days like drunkards soused
Imbibing and contriving blue.

What I knew you understood:
We loved, but first we had been loved
According to our fortune’s mood,
The tidal fields that pushed and shoved.

Our love was early and ordained—
Promise of a world renounced.
But what we felt was not sustained.
The dawn arrived, unannounced.

Yet what I am I keep with you
Captive in this primrose frame.
And what you are is lost in blue,
Although you claim to be the same.

(Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Wilson.)
 

"Linked Rowboats," photograph by John Goldie.

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