Olivia’s Sonnet a poem by Nathan Adams

(A Petrarchan sonnet forgoing rhyme*)

*(if there is such a thing)

Legs tangled, breath upon her nape. In sleep

We dream of words lost unto waking hours

And nomenclators are- Informing the

Impossible; the lexicon of love.

It’s every idiom doth defy the

Grasp of the cognisant mind governed tongue

But crawls out of slack throats in slumber; loves

Precise expression; failed somniloquence.

White horses fall off of gusts tempered and

In silver lulls drown. And snow’s fatal crash

On the loch sounds the same soft utterance

As lovers joined in dreams of poetry

That will leave an impression on the mind

But fade and dance as a ghost on the tongue.