Sonnet 1

William Wordsworth said poetry is "...emotion recollected in tranquility." The following poem begins an arc which starts at the beginning of a long-distance dating relationship that ended with me returning home after a year and marrying the girl, and continues through a waning marriage to its end. Very painful for me, but I hope enjoyable for you.

I have always been a formalist poetically, and like Shakespeare, so I thought the sonnet would make an excellent vehicle for my romantic feelings.


To My Love Upon Leaving for College

A warning dawn leaks sanguine through my mind
with brewing threats of swiftly rolling hours,
with flashes of the sadness we shall find
when time pours down on mine and yours, not ours.
And closer than feels safe the rumblings sound
out dolor for two hearts, haplessly marked
to be beneath those loudly pitch days drown'd,
or lose themselves in gusts of love unmarked.
But we would fain these rueful winds defy
by crescent hope rooted in certainty
that weath'red storms will love intensify,
that time will water our magnan'mity.
Each drop of time upon my lonely brow
will, to its torment, watch my fondness grow.