I was hesitant to post poetry when I started this blog. That was partly because I was impelled to jot down lessons for my grandchildren to hear, but it was also because I didn’t know how good it would feel. I’ve always understood that there’s no money in poetry, but I didn’t suspect there was as much audience for it as there appears to be, at least on the Internet.

I also didn’t suspect how much I’d prefer self-publishing to the process of submitting to small magazines, awaiting their decisions, and accepting their judgments.

So I drafted a number of posts about subjects on which I’d already composed sonnets, and I published the posts without the poems. Now and then I’m inclined to add the poem to this blog, like today.

On November 17, 2010 I put up a post called “Life in Las Rever,” in praise of reading backwards. I’d provide a link to it here except I don’t want colors or highlights to interrupt your reading. Life in Las Rever is about 8 pages from where I started.

Anyway, this is the companion sonnet, begun about a decade ago and finished in 2008:

I started reading backwards on my way
to work this morning and before I got
to yelekreb (the htron), I have to say
my grin had grown to smile and I’d shot
ahead to laughing as the everyday
advertisements and public service signs
put on new looks and sounds, began to play
with sweet absurdity and antic lines.

That tiny shift converted dull to rare,
subsumed banality and made a case
for kicking off the customs. Care to share
a dance with me? Ecarbme with grace?
Desserts are what you get for what you give,
and evil is an unright way to live.