The End of the Sonnet
A word was missing from his fourteenth line.
He mused on how much easier it would be
if one could still wedge an apostrophe
in “over,” or if cattle still were kine,
when he was yanked away from his design:
his daughter’s kitten, too far up a tree,
had to be rescued. Undelightedly
he undertook to grapple with white pine,
up in whose jutting plumes of needles clung
that tiny fright incarnate and enfurred.
He got it down. His daughter’s satisfaction
was ample, quick, and real. His forearm stung
with scratches, but his brain hummed with a word
found on a high branch, fathered by distraction.
Dec. 23
He’s finished tacking up the Christmas garland
so it arrays the Parish Hall at one end,
loops of glistering tinsel off a rafter.
Nagged by Sunday School teachers, none of whom
could reach to do it, he brought up his ladder
and hammered through their bicker of suggestions
to pin the swags the way he damn well wanted.
Under this job tomorrow an eight-year-old
boy, a seven-year-old girl will cradle
a large, diapered baby doll between them,
while shepherds of the same age, some of them
notorious brats, stand burlap-clad with canes,
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