I recently started taking an online course with Billy Collins (me and I don’t know how many other people). It is through a website called Masterclass and for $80 bucks I got to watch and listen to 14 or so lessons with this wonderful poet who provides not just his guidance but also a workbook with homework. I am far from finished with it but today we examined a Shakespeare sonnet. It was the most traditional of all the lessons.

The workbook challenged you to create your own 14 line sonnet, reminding you to keep the iambic pentameter rhythm going. It didn’t need to rhyme, he said but I thought if I am gong to try it, gotta go the whole way. Here is my first sonnet. it is far from William’s and it is far from even close to perfection but for some reason I thought I could share it with you. It just might be the start of a new series of “posts” some of which rhyme and some of which tell pieces of my truth. We will see how brave I am.


Along the way three men arrived
Singing running in multi color dreams
Winking yesterday really did survive
Stars fading stripes falling white becoming cream
 
Fluttering the wind caresses the screen
The morning breaking the sun alive
Each sound a message or a story mean
Day is born gone the men and all that’s fine
 
Alone I sit blessed to be alive awake
Pressing keys of black and white
Letters become words sentences to shake
My thoughts and feelings rarely right
 
Sun rising my words broken truth
A highway of meaning no end but proof