Hope

I'm on something of a sonnet kick. Shakespeare had it right, you know. It really is the perfect rhyming scheme. Three verses; it is, inescapably, the right number. Any less, and one is left wanting; any more, and one grows tired. And yet, three is not enough to bring the poem to completion, for the reader, taken by the constancy of the rolling rhymes, inevitably expects one stanza to lead to another. Something must break this cycle, and so, the final two lines. Thus, the sonnet is fulfilled, and both the poet and reader are satisfied.

Hope

If love, in longing, found a holy hand,

as palm and palm, profaner than the eye,

enfold and follow, as the two demand,

and make communion in a mute reply,

or if it sought a cheek of softer flesh

than falls upon this settling embrace,

prepared to offer up, and so enmesh,

as ought to marry hearts in happy grace,

or if it heard, again, a hushing breath,

unfinished until breathed afresh in turn

by other lips that long for sober death,

when told to love will only be to yearn,

then there is hope that heaven will arise,

although it be obscured in mortal guise.