Yesterday's aggravating sonnet is slowly pulling its threads together. It always amazes me how difficult it can be to write a 14-line poem with a simple rhyme and meter scheme. But sonnets are strange beasts, as I've said before (and if you want to hear more of my thoughts about them, you can read my long review of the most recent Norton Anthology, which I posted on this blog last February).

Outside it is snowing mildly. The mute trees, weighed down in white, shimmer in the flat morning light. Downstairs the radio drones the news: names and trouble, names and trouble. Coincidentally, "names" is one of the end rhymes in my sonnet's final couplet, a word that I have half-rhymed with "ashamed." None of this has anything to do with the news, except that it feels as if it does.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange, one for the other giv'n.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a better bargain driv'n.

That's Sir Philip Sidney talking, and this week I am in love with his sonnets: though you may not be . . . but humor me: say it aloud to yourself . . . just this quatrain . . . and tomorrow I will give you the next one.