Sonnet of the Hardened Heart
Care less, I warn myself; bother no more
With inner crevices: prying the shell
Like scabs (rough, oozing, sore), which crust, but tell
Of tumults against the psychic seabed floor;
It is in vain. Swollen and hard around
The meat (like newborn skin, or the vaginal flower),
The protection, obdurate, damns me. Damn the mound
Which buries my soul and suffocates what little power
My will may afford. That meat, that flower, that skin
(A pulsing pinkish mass) is thus entombed;
And yet, for her to exist at all, the wound
Must needs be sealed by this guardian within.
She lives within her shell; perhaps she dies
As well, because it makes and mutes her cries.
Theresa Werba (formerly known to the SCP community as Theresa Rodriguez) is the author of eight books, including What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse, and Sonnets, a collection of sixty-five Shakespearean, Spenserian, and Petrarchan sonnets. Her work appears in numerous journals, websites, and online publications, including the SCP Journal. She has been featured on Classical Poets Live where she discusses musicality and elocution in formal poetry. She is a contributing writer for Classical Singer Magazine. Werba’s background as a Classical singer informs her dramatic poetry readings which are available on Youtube @thesonnetqueen. Her website is www.theresawerba.com.
This was the earliest sonnet I have written that I can date in my memory– about 1985 or so, I was 23 years old. I had learned something about sonnets in high school but not sure how I ever got into writing them. You can also see that I employed a variant-hybrid form: abba cdcd effe gg. Not sure if that was intentional or the product of inexperience! Still the kernels of a lifetime of sonnet writing are there!