[Catherine Chandler]

I love so many aspects of this sonnet. Let me count the ways . . .

I love the way it begins in medias res, and how the themes of passing time and death are present throughout.

I love the haunting metaphor of the canary birds (we all know what they were used for!) and the simile of the old woman’s thoughts as “balloons with broken strings".

Most of all I love the way the poet has shown the various stages of the game of life up to and including the tender duplicity of the woman’s husband in lines 12 and 13.

A powerful, moving, expertly crafted sonnet.

[Chris O'Carroll]

"If they’ve passed the golden anniversary, they must be in their 70s, which sort of puts the lie to the final line."

But surely "old age never came" isn't meant as a literal statement of fact. It means that they never felt old, that their love never experienced the decrepitude that snuck up on their bodies, that they always related to each other like those two young lovers mentioned in the first quatrain.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Literal or no, I also scowl at the penultimate line of "old age never came". Everything in the poem seems to point at old age finally arriving -- the joke getting stale, the dementia / Alzheimer's setting in, their literal age... All of this invalidates the final line for me.

I also find some flaws in other images. I don't know if I'd ever consider newly caged canary birds "amused", which weakens that particular metaphor. I stumble over the grammar of L8, long-hyphens notwithstanding. I'm wanting to read it as "were" instead of "was".

Overall, I think the trope is good, and the intention is pretty clear, but the actual crafting of the poem leaves much to be desired, in my opinion.

[Philip Quinlan]

L8 should be "jokes" plural, I think, to make sense. And, of course, it would need to be "were" not "was".

This has a so-so ho-hum feel about it.

The two "came"s in the last line make the line fall flat.

Not earth-shaking.

Philip