So, what are you? they asked me, and their tone
suggested they’d decided my reply
would disappoint them in advance. My own
reserves of confidence were all-but dry.
How to admit the truth? How could I dress
my life’s threadbare achievements in a way
to make them more respectable; confess
exactly what it is I do all day?
But I spoke boldly. Poet, I declared:
Make of that what you will. For I am proud
to tread a path that others have not dared
and followed my true calling, not the crowd.
By normal measures, surely I have failed;
Yet cannot help but think I’ve still prevailed.
Wander as I will, the sonnet is the form I always come back to. Rigorous yet malleable, endlessly fascinating and challenging, and capable of containing so much more than its compact dimensions suggest.
Gonecycling (again) 