I really like this one.
Tim, your comment that we would recognize the writers of many of these sonnets from their voice or subject matter was quite apt. I've only encountered this writer's work here about a year ago (I liked it then, too), but immediately guessed who it was.
I love the runaway breathlessness of the meter that matches the scene depicted. I'll defer to those here with better metrical ears, but in the absence of a constant pattern, I would call this simply accentual verse. I read each line with five stresses, but only the third line is strict iambic pentameter. (Maybe the ninth line, too, though I don't read it that way.) I even hear three straight stressed syllables in line 7 ("striped cat scurries").
Not being familiar with the painting, my only question is whether there is some tension, or even a slight contradiction, between Mary's look in lines 9-10 of "shock, or mute appeal" and the statement in lines 13-14 that her face is "strangely still," her eyes "wide with apprehension and surmise."
But that's just a minor question regarding a spectacular poem!
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