Rewriting a Sonnet by Inez Cook

Here is an untitled poem I wrote in 2012.  It was written in sonnet form for a creative writing class.  

My son carefully reaches for his bricks

knocking yesterday’s creation to the floor.

Then stops mid-crawl with wide eyes and inspects

a tiny speck of dirt beside the door.

Outside he sits quite still so he can stare

at tree-shapes and the wobbling washing line

with pegged white sheets that billow in the air.

Then he lifts up his arms because he can.

I learn from him that stillness between action

is what we need to grow.  He’s offering

a gift; each moment is an invitation

to see how ordinary things can sing.

Remembering his eyes I see it now:

Those sheets were ship’s white sails, the lawn its bow.

At the time I was focussed on it as a technical exercise and managed to keep to a strict rhyme scheme and metre.  Rereading it recently I thought it worked as a technical exercise but that the word choices were sometimes imprecise and some lines were clunky.  So I rewrote it and gave it a title.

Shared Attention

My son crawls past his painted wooden bricks,

Knocks yesterday’s creation to the floor,

Then stoops his head with wide eyes and inspects

A tiny speck of dirt beside the door.

Now in the garden, motionless, we stare

At tree-shapes and the bobbing washing line.

His eyes dart up at two crows’ soundless flight

As pegged sheets swell and shudder in the air.

I learn from him that stillness between action

Is what we need to grow; and noticing

The world together is an invitation

To see how ordinary things can sing.

Remembering that day I see it now:

Those sheets were ship’s white sails, the lawn its bow.

Rewriting it, still within the sonnet conventions, felt like a really tricky jigsaw puzzle.  I knew how much space I had to express each idea, but some words had to be more specific and certain sentence structures needed to change.  Stanza 2 took the most work. I took out the last line, inserted a new image about the 'soundless crows' which I had found in my original notes for the poem, and swapped the lines which slightly altered the rhyme scheme.  I also wanted the lines in stanza 3 to run more smoothly and removed the words 'gift' and 'offering' which I felt were a bit too sentimental.  I am happy with the result, but who knows, maybe in three years I'll feel the need to do a third rewrite!