A Secret Place

If I owned three volcanoes and a flower
I too might escape with a flock of wild birds,
or else, so afraid of eruptions, I'd cower
under the cover of my baobab, say words
to ward off death and draw a friend to share
my lonely life of care and wasting time on herds

of new sprouts. Until one rose appears, spares
my life without beauty by her perfect self. Sweet
at last staves off catastrophe, at once pares
life to essence, time wasted makes it full, replete,
a change in vista complete, what's unseen deletes fear
and allows the eye to see the real not effete,

so death becomes gears stopped, shell dropped, stars near.
"It's such a secret place, the land of tears."*


* The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
In response to Tony Maude's excellent article on Rhyme and Sonnets and his encouragement yesterday to write a sonnet at dVerse Poets Pub. The rhythm is off but it's my attempt at a terza rhyme sonnet. It combines with the prompt by Grapeling at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads the other day accompanied by another excellent article and a word list from a favorite and wise book, The Little Prince. I took the photo in a garden in Paris.