(First appearance: Facebook, Poets All Call group, 26 July 2015. Poet Joseph Arechavala had posted a challenge to “wrote about any subject in Shakespearean English.” I have lost count of the number of sonnets I have written, but I know it was well into the three-hundreds in 2010, so i’m confident that i’ve gone beyond “ccclxxiii” and may shoehorn this into the canon.)

sonnet ccclxxiv

when we are by possessions too possess’d
and risk a heart for diamonds and the like
that heart is sour’d. acquisitive unrest
gives satisfaction chase, but fails to strike.

yet when we are by love most full unraptur’d
and risk our life and fortune for such love
possessions immaterial are captur’d
and we are dyed with rainbows from above.

the risk of loss is real and in its season
that dreaded loss will come, if soon or late,
and though with wrenchéd heart we plead for reason
some life is reasonless; such is our fate.

with time we may enjoy what had been felt
and then into eternity we melt . . .