The poet who commits to fourteen lines
Finds focus and a certain inspiration,
While words that don't conduce his destination
Can have no place in sonnet's strict confines.
A marriage, or a pledge made to a child
Can focus life, as poems focus art
A parent pares all that cannot be part
Of life that son and daughter have beguiled
He feels he's both the finder and the found;
His yoke is tight, but surely it is his.
He bucks and starts, acknowledging what is
His lot and manifest, to which he's bound.
The sum of his creation stands or falls
On what transpires within these prison walls.
-- JJM = #60 in the I Ching Sonnet Project
