[Judith Terzi]

No qualms. This is a moving, intimate poem.So many details packed into 14 lines. Nothing seems forced to me. Love it.

[Paddy Raghunathan]

I agree with most folks that the poem takes you "right there."

However, I have a problem with the last line..."quiet wars" opens up a Pandora's Box...what quiet wars? Something specific? Something general? Why don't we feel the underlying tension before in the poem?

The poem takes me "right there" up until the penultimate line, and then I feel like I am "not there" in the last.

Which leaves me feeling...was I "ever there?"

[Michael F]

I feel the quiet, aching beauty of this sonnet today on re-reading it much more than when I first read it.

It's one of the mysterious, confounding and frankly humbling things about poetry, about all art, that my appreciation of it depends on my experience, on the day, and on my fleeting moods.

*sigh*

I can only say, well done.

[Jennifer Gordon]

Yes, it's unforgiveable, yet how I unconsciously elided that first word to give the metre space to shine, lamenting how this particular stanza seems to utterly disregard such technicalities in favour of presenting the moment in question, either an amateurish note or rather, the reminder that telling your "muse" it WILL dance within this frame not infrequently means it will also put you at odds with strictures because thoughts can only be forced so far ere they rebel effectively.
Whence critiquing practically thrown out in favour of the moment at hand, I shall merely lose me therein, enjoying what the sonneteer conveys in lieu of how.
I like how this proceeds from the child's rueful perspective, tendering a flavour of that home and how in one swift instant it was turned upside-down for a sweeter glimpse of why they even happened.
That closing couplet seals the cameo perfectly. Me injoyed.