All we need is fourteen lines, well thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing an heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing an heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.
~ Billy Collins
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A Living Pencil 
A chapter on writing poetry in “Pen on Fire” (a book on writing I’m in the middle of) quoted Billy Collins. I hadn’t heard of him before – I must search him out.
Carrie
That’s my kind of sonnet….Elizabethan doesnt work for me the way it does for Cindy at Dominion Family 🙂
At any rate, since posting poems in April for the past two years, I am more in tune to new ones (new ones to me) and have already started to save the ones for April 2008.
Hope the first day of school is going smoothly.
Dana in GA
I’m glad that you liked the casserole! I should make another to herald the end of summer!
Oh I love it! What fun! thanks Carol! I also hope that school is as inspiring as it is instructional. Love, m in sc