Sonnets for Ashley Faye: Sonnet 3

This sonnet has been published online by the Society of Classical Poets. It follows in the footsteps of one of my favorite traditions: writing about the inability to write about something. In this case, the ineffable "something" is a perfect moment one early morning in the Spring after our son, Luke, was born.

How can I write you anything, my love?

How can I write your smile in fourteen lines?

A hundred thousand lines are not enough,

much less to write the splendor of your mind.

How can I write the way I felt today,

when I awoke before the morning sun,

and in the bedside lamplight, there you lay,

smiling, watching me sleep, nursing our son?

How can I write the way your hair appeared,

red in the lamplight, fallen on the bed?

Or how your voice fell softly on my ears

like angels singing everything you said?

How can I write a sonnet true enough
for even one true moment of my love?