Here’s a sonnet I wrote a few days ago.  IF you know anything about sonnets, this one has an unusual rhyme scheme while still fulfilling, so far as I can tell, all the requirements of a sonnet:  One octet followed by one sestet with a volt or turn around line nine.  The subject is unusual and very modern.  Rather than focusing on the exploits of some cruel love, I have taken as a point of departure the crash, or the myth of the crash, at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.  I think of it as a rather sad poem, a little like Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” in a certain way, without claiming to be the poet that Matthew Arnold is.  Enjoy, if you will.

 

 

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Roswell

 

O, Flung across the darkness, dust, despair
of starplains thrummed with poison light, you came
so trillions far from world of surging heart-fast  air,
you pilgrims grey; the void expunged your name,
and so you crashed on desert rolling rare
around a yellow sun, its bluest earth
       alight with eyes so heaven-turned, they bear
the hope of twins betrayed,   betwained at birth:
to join again, to build a solar firth.
Instead, you fell from hectic flashing skies,
exploding ship a silver sun eclipse.
O, what is lost, what flashing mortal mirth
betrayed when pilgrim tumbles down and dies?
A silence now:  the void annoints our lips.