Volume 16:1, Winter 2015
The Sonnet Issue
Sonnet for a Namesake
For so long were all women regarded
as queens or as things to be discarded,
as Helens or Beatrices or Lauras,
swept by palm fronds, with heavenly auras.
Love’s incited by a look or a smile
that suffices for so long awhile
without conversation or even a word
that their real existence cannot be assured.
Were we all men would you call us your friends
without knowing our wits or the good of our ends?
What comes from the lips, the children of thought,
not the rosiness of what Nature’s wrought,
is what is more truly the cause of love
and the marriage of minds with the stars above.
Laura Cleveland is a recent graduate of St. John's College in Annapolis, where she was awarded the Annual Essay Prize for her Junior essay on Don Quixote and an Honorable Mention for her Senior essay on Plato's Republic. She plans to continue her studies in philosophy, poetry, and liberal education and hopes both to teach and to write. She is a member of the online "10 Word" Poetry Workshop.