This new book contains a lot of sonnets,
which I hadn't written until--
I hadn't even attempted this sonnet
until I was, well, in my 40s.
And I only attempted it then because an editor contacted me
about a sonnet-off that they were
having to commemorate the sonnet that Keats
wrote about the cricket.
So I thought, why not?
I would just try a sonnet.
So this is the first sonnet I ever wrote.
It's called "The Church Gardens, A Walk."
And apatite, in this case, is a gemstone.
Hummingbirds in blue blurs whirr,
necklaced around the nectar feeder.
Each creature gleaming bright.
A piece of polished apatite through whose facet sunlight
shatters into flashing.
Gaslights shards that fall into the larkspur and blaze up.
Igniting every flower.
Each glowing petal blue proclaims the feast
by blue or glowing.
Bluer than a Day-Glo wing.
And yet though they in flames are wrapped from stem to bloom.
It is the fire the flowers consume.