Tag Archives: exploration

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Atavistic’

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Just past the new development’s array,
beyond the parking lot, the flowers, the fence,
the land becomes uneven, falls away
into an area of no pretence,
abandoned cars, some rocks, some weeds, a bog.
Here are drawn children and eccentrics both,
searching for wild flowers, or a snake, a frog,
to nature lurking in the undergrowth,
beyond the ordered asphalt, lineal law;
drawn by our lower brain of hunter, ape,
where food is found or killed and eaten raw,
life is survival, and sex may mean rape.
Bricks, debris, rubble, condoms, empty beer…
yet, strangely, life-long loves have started here.

*****

I subscribe to the Nietzschean view of humans as a rope stretched over an abyss, animal on the one side, posthuman on the other. I think the ape is very alive within us, as is the drive to reach beyond ourselves to something vastly greater.

This sonnet was originally published in Rat’s Ass Review (thanks, Roderick Bates) but I’ve modified one line here to match the photo I found for illustration.

Photo: “Vacant Lot” by Curtis Gregory Perry is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Non-traditional sonnet: RHL, ‘The Range of Change’

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In times of no change, the advantage lies
with those who are receptive to being taught.
Parents and teachers may seem truly wise,
avoiding dangers with which life is fraught;
the stories of the old none would despise
when they hold all the answers that are sought.

In times of constant change, advantage shifts
to those who, hating school, go and explore.
Old answers fail. Fresh questions cause great rifts
with parents who are seen as wise no more;
questions now turn up unexpected gifts
in crossing unknown seas to virgin shores.

Remain alert that there’s a range of change
from none, to gradual, to fast, to strange.

*****

A sonnet, or not? 14 lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming regularly and with a final couplet. Though not in either of the standard English forms, it has the organised, compressed, reflective sense of the sonnet. Recently published in Shot Glass Journal, Online Journal of Short Poetry. Thanks, Mary-Jane Grandinetti!

“Climate change icon” by Tommaso.sansone91 is marked with CC0 1.0.