A Sonnet Response

I like writing prompts, a lot. So when I saw this challenge, ‘EIF Poetry Challenge’ I gave it a good look. Sonnets are lovely. With a sonnet, you know what you’ve taken on. There will be only 14 lines, with a set number of ‘beats’ in set places, and there will be a rhyming scheme of a particular kind (one of two, actually, but not terribly different from each other.

So, the call for a sonnet, how could I resist? The person calling for sonnets is someone I know, as much as one ‘knows’ people online. She had got on board with something I’m working on, and so adding all of this together, of course I’d get a sonnet into the action.

When I got myself ready for this EIF Poetry Challenge, I’d intended looking into a sonnet I might already have, but the keyboard called to me, and changed my mind. It was time to write a new sonnet. And so, in accordance with instructions, here is my sonnet.

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I hadn’t necessarily meant to write a poem about Covid-19, but that’s the main thing these days, isn’t it? And that’s the way it went, but with a possibly different slant on it, and bringing another ‘big thing’ into the action. A thing that may or may not be connected.

This is my new sonnet:

No Decent Reason …
What on Earth is the reason, for this disease?
A rhetorical question, but is there a ready answer?
Is it response for doing whatever we please?
Have we become Nature’s deadliest cancer?

We’re killing things with barely any restraint –
With no regard for damage that we’ve caused,
Murdering creatures – no avenue for complaint
Wanting things right now. If only we’d paused …

Covid-19 a symptom of devastations,
Inflicted on habitats, trees cut down.
Some put all the blame on developing nations,
But the destroyer here is the big end of town …

How do you explain to a little kid,
The selfish reasons for what us oldies did …