“I accidentally wrote a sonnet…”

“I accidentally wrote a sonnet,” I told my husband, when he returned from the swimming run last night.  He laughed, understandably. 

I hadn’t set out to write anything that evening – he had taken both boys swimming and I was supposed to be sorting washing, hoovering the house, getting things sorted for the working week ahead.  But I sat down, first, to read some sonnets a writer friend had sent through – and there it was – inspiration struck!

I haven’t written much about grief for a while.  Partly, I think, because it isn’t so raw now, so emotions don’t pour from the pen so readily.  There is, though, still so much I want to write about it – but I often don’t know where to start, or, scarier still, if I start, where it will end.

This is where the sonnet form came into its own.  The rhyme, rhythm and structural limits felt like they gave me the relative safety to explore some of my thoughts, whilst, at the same time, constraining them.  I couldn’t get carried away on a torrent of emotion, whilst I was trying to think of something that rhymed with ‘heal,’ or figuring out how to make a line run for one syllable less.  When I reached line 14, that was it – no over-running of thoughts, no emotional puddle at the end.  I found the whole process cathartic and enjoyable.

So anyway – enough rambling in praise of the accidental sonnet.  Here it is (and if Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning can give numbers as their titles, I feel entirely justified in not giving it an imaginative title either!):

Sonnet About Grief

Translucent scars can only part-conceal

My gaping wounds; beneath the scars they smart.

Why is it that it takes so long to heal

The wounds that are inflicted on the heart?

Just as the gentle breezes turn the tide,

And overwhelming swells, at last, retreat,

Another breaker surges from the side,

And knocks me, yet again, clean off my feet.

Snippets of conversations, overheard,

A thank you note, forgotten, in a drawer;

A scent, a place, a dormant memory stirred –

And breakers crash on grief’s hard sands once more.

Recalling how you loved me keeps me brave;

I learn to ride, not fight, each crashing wave.