PROSE POETRY
BRIAN WHALEN
FIRST SONNET
for Maple
Vergil penned his great Aeneid one rhyme per day, pacing the fields of ancient Rome—each step a metronome, a foot in time; when meter married tread, Vergil walked home. While Keats strode home from Charles Cowden Clarke’s abode, he kenned Ilios, dwelled in it; endued, his pen found paper—and as larks announced a blue dawn, Keats wrote a sonnet. Through the ages poets have roamed, and dreamed, and sang of wonders far and near; their poems, though motionless, convey our minds to realms untraveled—over ocean, stone, and loam. And you, my daughter, who is yet to talk, what words will you write when you learn to walk?
Brian Phillip Whalen’s debut collection, Semiotic Love [Stories], was named one of the Best Books of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews. His second book, In Each Breath a Darkness [a memoir], forthcoming from WTAW Press, chronicles his sister’s heroin addiction and death. Brian's writing has appeared in The Southern Review, Creative Nonfiction, Copper Nickel, Poets.org, and elsewhere. He's an Assistant Professor of English at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, where he lives with his wife, daughter, and a dog named Porter.
