A Sonnet

                                                                      I sat in windows
                                                                    doorways, closets
                                                                  prostrate upon the
                                                                  bed, or walking for
                                                           hours, naming the flow
                                                       ers I could. When misery
                                                 came and went in 1995, mira
                                   culously love took his place. Against
                               my better judgment, I, occasionally, in
vited misery back in. He’d look at me brilliantly like
one staring at the sun and recline on his golden door.
He’d leave inevitably for another, another more
but things were evident. I liked how he’d watch
me pile wood on the floor.

Credit

Copyright © 2023 by Jos Charles. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 11, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

About this Poem

“I had been reading the work of the poet Thomas Hoccleve and thought to myself, ‘Hmm, there seem to be lots of so-called classical rhetorical techniques in these poems that poets tend not to use anymore. I wonder if I might use a very stodgy-seeming one to contemporary effect?’ This is my attempt at writing a poem whose main mechanism is personification. Personification is strange and something that gets ‘the human’ off the ground. After all, what is more personified than a person? The poem also has flowers.”
—Jos Charles