ON THE SONNET

                    I wander into wonder as I write,
                    For setting pen to paper I invite
                    The Muse to waft me into a new world
                     Where unimagined visions are unfurled.
                     It’s only by my pacing down this line
                     That I discover where my thoughts incline,
                     Notions revealed as I move rhyme to rhyme,
                     Sometimes pedestrian, sometimes sublime—
                     And here I turn, according to the form,
                     If following the shape of Shakespeare’s norm,
                     Though couplets were not normally his mode;
                     Still, I find them a challenge and a goad
                     As, no doubt, Alexander Pope once did:
                     But now, farewell, as I complete this grid.

*