THE ABYSS

     “Throw me a line!” I called to the Abyss,
     From out of which all inspiration came;
     “Just get me started on the path of bliss,
     And from thereon I’ll find out my own aim,”
     For once a sonnet sets out on its course,
     It gathers its momentum as it goes:
     The form itself is its most fruitful source,
     Its beat and rhyme defining where it flows—
     Until the turn, which takes a different tack,
     Perhaps to say there’s no Abyss at all
     And what just seems a Void, silent and black,
     Is memory, that fund on which I call,
          Or memory and imagination intertwined,
          The magical recesses of the mind.

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