Sonnet to be Read from the Bottom Up
I hope it did, and you are doing fine.
To where it should have started, with this line:
And make it make some sense as up you rise
I did my best to keep the end in sight
If not, I trust you’re in for a surprise.
I hope you’re game and try to read this right.
And do it in a wholly different way.
When you attempt to make it something new
Some thing you do a hundred times a day
I know it isn’t easy not to do
Why not ascend instead of just descend?
I mean, how really mixed up could you get?
I had the thought: I’ll start this at the end.
Although I knew that you might be upset,
Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty chapbooks. His second new and selected, Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017), was published in 2017. His most recent chapbook is a collection of ekphrastic poems, Images into Words, a collaboration with poet Jim Crenner, published by the Dove Block Project in Geneva, NY. He co-founded and was an editor of both Field and Ploughshares. From 1973-2014 he taught at Wells College and is now Emeritus Professor. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. His poetry website is https://justanotherdayin our town.com