I am delighted with the comments on Sam's Shakespearian Sonnet. All thirteen of the forthcoming sonnet threads will remain open for the duration of Master Davis' Lariatship. Alicia Stallings has written an elegant sonnet in which her love for bats becomes a trope for poetry--which is never even mentioned! Duh! That's why it is elegant. Here is our second entry in the the Great Dick Davis Sonnet Bake-off:
Explaining an Affinity for Bats
That they are only glimpsed in silhouette,
And seem something else at first—a swallow—
And move like new tunes, difficult to follow,
Staggering towards an obstacle they yet
Avoid in a last-minute pirouette,
Somehow telling solid things from hollow,
Sounding out how high a space, or shallow,
Revising into deepening violet.
That they sing—not the way the songbird sings
(Whose song is rote, to ornament, finesse)—
But travel by a sort of song that rings
True not in utterance, but harkenings,
Who find their way by calling into darkness
To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things.
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