By Robert Wynne
The Baker’s Sonnet is a 5-stanza, 13-line rhyming poem with 13 syllables per line. Rhyme scheme and stanza organization are as follows: ABA / BCD / CDE / FE / FA. This form results in a poem that is 1 line shorter than a typical sonnet, but includes 29 more syllables. The longer lines also tend to impact sentence structure, and breath, accommodating the varying syntax needed to achieve the combination of syllabic and rhyme requirements. While the stanza breaks help to bury the repetition of the end rhymes, the echo of the initial rhyme at the end serves to bookend the poem sonically. Here are 2 examples:
Moss Responds
As a young spore, I learned that this world was a cruel place,
favoring blue sky to brown earth, bright flowers over
such lush green. I have watched as our slow persistent race
spread a thick blanket on rocks and trees, seen twigs hover
just above the forest floor, bending under their own
weight. There is no law governing the respect of plants
but that doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. I have known
bark to speak fondly of a hundred years, go on rants
about point of view – if you can’t jump into the same
river twice, why jump at all? Roots are more than a choice.
A stone once told me that he had come up with a name
for all the life teeming below him, but his thin voice
cracked, we grew apart, and of course I resumed the chase.
Morning (with Paranoia)
While you slept, night snuck its fingers into the woodgrain
of the breakfast table, and swirled eyes from the weak oak.
That’s why you feel like you’re being watched, when dawn light sprains
itself carrying each day into view. As you woke,
the mice in your walls held a summit, and decided
once again not to kill you. Thankfully, your lawn
has no ill intentions, though at dusk it divided
the ants into teams, and now it’s judging portraits drawn
in dirt, with only legs and antennae. Your likeness
is amazing! The bed sighs, letting you flee once more
into this world, drifts to dreams of riding a bike, dress
flowing miles behind, because even fabric longs for
the sheer joy of snapping taut in wind, being used, sane.
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