Sonnet: To Please The Poet

Sonnet: To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

 
for poets who still write in meter and rhyme

To please the poet, words must dance―

staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music―mild,

adagio.

 
To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis―
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.
 

To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment―mute,

obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.
 

To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.

Originally published by The Lyric. Note: despite the extra line breaks this is a sonnet with three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed -A-A -B-B -C-C DD. Keywords: sonnet, rhyme, meter, form, formal, traditional, music, musical, poet, poets, poems, poetry, frogs, princes, princesses