My Small Friend has Put me to Shame

My dear friend, Ariel, has been blogging beautiful things all year.  I could say that she has time to write while I have not, since she graduated last year, but the fact of her teaching job flattens that argument.  Suffice it to say that I am thoroughly ashamed of myself, and mean to be a better blogger in the future.

My friend's blog can be found here, and I highly recommend it.  Her last post features a sonnet she wrote for me (which I strive to be worthy of), and so here I will post the sonnet I wrote for her (which she surpasses) last year.  Cheating, yes, but it is still new to the blog, if not to me!

Ariel

My friend is small but Lion is her name.

Bright Lion Child; a queen of feyish height,

Come light with cheer for souls lost at mountain’s

Foot: gives them joy for joy and sword for fight.

My friend is sweet but keeps a sword sound-safe

In her pocket.  If parchment were the soil,

Then all the world whole would her small sword make,

And fairies dance where today goblins spoil.

My friend is quiet, but she laughs so to

Ignite the sky with sunset--drown the dry,

Loveless desert with blesséd water. Through
Sad eve’ning her glad voice good still supplies.
Run to my friend if a kind ear you seek,
Or, more still, hush and hear the Lion speak.


I wrote another sonnet last year, at the same time Ariel wrote this wonderful poem, and since I have just left my college without the promise of return in the fall, it feels as apt now as it did at the time of writing.

To the Year

In verse their faces venture I to catch;

With oil and water struggles brush to note

Their voices vibrant.  Stills, though, cannot match

The real.  Solely to thought one must not devote.

Now snap the photograph, write quick the quote:

Be still, be still for memory may not

This moment keep still.  Future none makes hote

His voice, her eyes, your laugh permanent wrought;

No yarn to fastly stitch, nor ink to blot.

While days and eve’nings rapidly move on:

Those songs, these dances, mem’ries which cannot

Again be made.  How glad we are that dawn

These days brings promised joy: wine, bread,

And love and comforts known if never said.