I thought it fitting, this being the start of a new year, and everyone reflecting on the old year, to post a sonnet that's "backwards." I call it "Sonnet in Reflection" for two reasons: 1) the meter is trochaic pentameter rather than iambic and therefore backwards, or in "reflection" as in a mirror; and 2) it is a sonnet about reflection in solitude. When we are alone in silence or near-silence, we tend to self-examination and/or meditation on the past. That is only human nature, whether we like it or not.
I suppose I could have taken the backwards concept all the way and put the ending couplet at the beginning. In fact, I could still do that; the poem would still work starting with the couplet, then the rest as is. Maybe I will do that someday. But I'll leave it for now. It's not my favorite poem, nor do I think it's my best effort. If I were to revise it, or try to write an altogether new "sonnet in reflection," I'd attempt to make the linebreaks more graceful, using fewer enjambments, and use nothing but two-syllable rhymes (to better reinforce the trochees). But someone liked this one enough to publish it, and for that I'm grateful!
Sonnet in Reflection
Thoughts loom larger in a room made narrow
by necessity, and blunted dreams take
on a sharper edge; the days, once furrowed
with the care of ordinary things, make
smoother strides from dark to light. Reflections
are the tapestries of solitude; their
stitches stitch themselves, and vivisect one's
reasoning in disconcerting ways. Bare
images emerge that one would rather
keep beneath one's clothing, manifesting
secrets spun where old ambitions gather
dust: the stuff of truth, the soul's divesting.
Self, obscured by living, now is clearer,
seen in solitude's relentless mirror.
© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in The Lyric
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| "Lady Looking in the Mirror" John William Waterhouse |
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