Tuesday Poem: "Sonnet for My Jailer"

I never was a man to be restrained,

I looked for no horizon’s easy grin.

I thought that love demands a soul enchained,

The sleeper wakes, enchanted but hemmed in.

No prison could be sweeter than your mouth,

No sentence could be longer than your lashes;

And even in the wasted, icy south,

No wind could turn our fire, love, to ashes.

Though marriage is a word some use with scorn

And say the groom is cowered by her tongue;

Perhaps they waken to a dream stillborn

And never hear love’s music truly sung.

If you’re my jailer, throw away the key,

For locked within your heart I am set free.

My apologies to readers and fellow poets, I was away in the wilds of Takamatua on the beautiful Banks Peninsula as a Parent Helper with my son's Outdoor Education camp. The weather was glorious. So caught up was I in the preparation for it, that I forgot to schedule a poem posting for Tuesday so here it is 3 days late.

The poet wishes to acknowledge The Press in whose pages this poem first appeared.