My Sonnet

(From the archives – August, 2005)

I think that many (most?) of you probably weren’t hanging around back in 2005, just a few short months after I started this blog. So I think that very few people saw this. Today I was helping out over on Yahoo! Answers, talking about sonnets, and was reminded of my own venture into this world. Thought I’d share a bit of a walk down memory lane…

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A Gift for My Daughter

Ok, here goes nothing. When my daughter Katherine was born I wrote
her a baby diary detailing every day of Kerry’s pregnancy. One of
those, “It’s not something she’ll understand now, but maybe when she
gets older she’ll appreciate it” gifts.

When Kerry was pregnant
with Elizabeth I knew that I’d have to do something similar, but not
the same. It hasn’t been easy, and I haven’t been doing a very good
job of trying. Her first birthday is next week and I owe her this
special gift.

So, I present a sonnet. I hope it’s good.

She looks at me and all my cares of mind
Dissolve like fleeting clouds from sun-warm’d skies.
Halt, Time! Preserve this wonder that I find
When I behold the heavens in her eyes.

But would the echoes of her laughter fade,
A cold eternal silence in their wake?
What dreams left unfulfilled, what bliss delayed,
If I should all of her tomorrows take?

Her future’s yet to come, mine lies unfurl’d:
‘Tis not for me alone that she exists.
For no imagination in the world
Could e’er conceive of beauty such as this.

So put your hand in mine and walk with me,
And know that all my life, I live for thee.

Updated 8/22: Changed a few words around.

I have no idea if it’s any good, but I think the most important thing right now has been to finish it. Being the Shakespeare
geek I am I did my best to get the Elizabethan form down. It helps
that my daughter’s name is Elizabeth, because that makes it all the more
geeky :), even if I’m the only one in my family gets the joke.

I’m
hoping to print it, frame it, and stick it on a wall until she’s about
15 years old or so, in high school, and learns what a sonnet is. Then I
can point to it and see what she thinks.

Her birthday is
Wednesday so I still have a few ideas to futz over it and tweak a word
here and there, this is really just the first complete draft. But,
again, I want to commit myself to it so that I finish the fool thing and
don’t put it on the shelf with all the other great ideas.
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File this one as complete, by the way – a matted, framed version hangs from her bedroom wall.