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Sonnet variation: Sally Thomas, ‘Eventide’

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The sea unfolds itself onto the sand
Again, again. It drags its yellow hem
Across our feet and back. You hold my hand

And sing to me, the first bar of a hymn:
Abide with me. The phrase, unfinished, slides
Away into the dusk. The world’s wet rim

Keeps wrinkling on the sky. The eventide’s
Upon us now, the turning of the day,
The long slow ebb as everything subsides

Into the dark. The sea in disarray
Repeats itself. There’s nothing more to see.
The waves rush thinly in, then pull away

As, louder now, you sing, Abide with me,
Above the slow unfolding of the sea.

*****

Sally Thomas writes: “Sometime in the spring, Ken Gordon of The Sonneteer mentioned to me that he’d love for me to send him something, and I said that I didn’t have anything to send. I’d just published a big sonnet sequence that I had been writing over a number of years, but I wasn’t writing sonnets currently. Well, said Ken, I’ll wait. And because he was waiting, I thought I might as well make a new stab at something. I like terza rima and the various ways you can play with tying it off, and I had Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” at the forefront of my mind, because I’d had my spring workshop students read it. This poem fairly quickly fell into terza rima and, once it had done that, it wrote itself.”

‘Eventide’ was first published in The Sonneteer

Sally Thomas is the author of two books of poetry, Motherland and Among the Living, both published by Able Muse Press, as well as an anthology, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940, a novel, and a collection of short stories. She is Visiting Professor of Poetry in the low-residency MFA program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, and a regular contributor to the Substack newsletter Poems Ancient and Modern. 

“#Sunset at the #laxmanpurbeach #neil #island #andaman . Thanks a lot to the #lovely #couple . #silhoutte #beach #sea #dusk #soi #streetsofindia #_mobilography_ #mypixeldiary #photographers_of_india #soi #indiaclicks #igramming_india” by KasoKaishyap is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: Daniel Kemper, ‘We Talked’

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Why the mumbled answers, often feeling
weary, staring out the window: bitter,
wistful, dreamy, harried — always reeling,
not engaging, letting out a titter,
mocking laughs or strange and distant crying?
But eventually she says it’s cancer,
not affairs, not me – then we were trying,
talking even if there was no answer.
But I would have those awful times again:
I whispered her to sleep and once she slept
I stroked her scalp and tucked her sheets, and then
I ran off to the shower and I wept.
We talked. We really talked though it was draining,
as one, about the time that was remaining.

*****

Daniel Kemper writes: “This poem is utterly imagination, perhaps of the “O my prophetic soul” variety. Alexandra (that’s her name) and I were out of contact at the time, but it would have been right as she came down with cancer, if I have my timeline right. It’s a multi-meter sonnet of the kind I thought probably the easiest to which I could introduce people. It starts off in trochaic meter and changes to iambic at the volta. This design choice was to have descending meter for the down mood, and when looking at the bright spot, change to ascending meter. The couplet unifies them via iambic meter plus feminine endings, hopefully that accented the coming together of the two at the end, even if unconsciously.”

‘We Talked’ was originally published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.

Photo: “Sick Day” by RLHyde is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.