My Garden

Lush, fresh-pruned verdure shades the cobbled path,
It bursts with rich-hued blossoms strewn about
Whence sweet aromas waft, blend, and enswathe,
And droops with luscious, nectar-swollen fruit.

But leaves spread greedily to hoard the light;
And tendrils curl to choke a rival stem.
And upstarts rise amid the blooms to fight,
Usurp their place, and wrest the life from them.

I am the gardener. This plot is mine.
My spade and hoe, my trowel and my shears
Uproot the weeds, prune back the errant vine
From fragile blooms and infant green fruit-spheres.

Without my steel-bladed autocracy
The fair and fruitful die in anarchy.

 

The Ocean Sea

The waters that gleam turquoise here for miles
And shimmer with the tropics’ blazing rays,
That lap the white-sand shores of verdant isles
As gently as the salty sea-breeze plays,

Are those that swell to lofty, frothing heights
Where screaming gales perturb the freezing brine,
And course beneath titanic sheets of ice,
And crush abyssal depths where no rays shine.

If they so fiercely rage a world away,
Cannot this blue serenity yield fast
To what their fleeting fancy flings its way –
A rushing tide, a roaring cyclone blast?

This peace lies at their mercy totally,
For they are but a single ocean sea.

 

The Setting and the Rising

The lazy, golden disc that dimly glows
With gentle light and ponderously hangs
Amid a sky of crimson, mauve, and rose,
Descending calmly to the western flanks,

This very moment is to distant eyes
The youthful morning blaze, blindingly bright,
Ascending high and filling turquoise skies
With radiant streams of white-hot, diamond light.

The once-almighty light that ruled the day,
Now dwindles and flies steadily away
To leave our heavens cold and tenebrous.

What eyes awaken in what distant place
To greet the dying remnant’s other face,
Beholding it as once it shone to us?

 

Iuppiter Lassus

O heavy clouds, I know what once you were:
A mighty thunderhead, a razing storm.
But now you droop, and only half-obscure
The evening sun behind a fading form.

Your midnight depths have fragmented and thinned.
Your snaking, white-hot bolts no longer flash.
You loose no quenching torrents, no shrill wind,
No rumbling roar, no heaven-rending crash.

O Father Jove! O lightning-wielding king!
How awesomely you raged! But now your might
Is spent, and you can only scowl and loom.

But I know that the western winds shall bring
Another cloud, a stronger storm, to smite,
To sow this wretched land, this fallow womb.

 

Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana, where he practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. His poems have appeared in Indiana Voice Journal and Tulip Tree Review. He has also had short stories and works of legal scholarship published in various journals. He also composes music, which may be heard on his YouTube channel.

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10 Responses

  1. Amy Foreman

    Adam, these are lovely, melodic sonnets, rich and lush in their natural imagery . . . but with occasional glimpses into the metaphysical world beyond. You have skillfully employed eighteenth century Romanticism in the twenty-first century. Well done!

    Reply
    • Adam Sedia

      Thank you! I am honored to receive such a compliment from such a talented poet.

      Reply
  2. E. V.

    This was a good morning for the SCP’s. Readers are not only able to enjoy the beautiful, vivid verse of Adam Sedia, but also enjoy the positivity of a premiere poet giving a complimentary comment to another writer.

    Reply
  3. James A. Tweedie

    Adam, In each poem you managed to tell a story, introduce a spiritual/philosophical idea, offer vivid imagery set in an every-day-universal context readily accessible to nearly every person on the planet, and fit it all nicely within the formal constraints of a sonnet. That’s a lot to squeeze into such small packages! Well done.

    I particularly enjoyed the final lines of The Setting and the Rising:

    What eyes awaken in what distant place
    To greet the dying remnant’s other face,
    Beholding it as once it shone to us?

    Lovely.

    Reply
  5. C.B. Anderson

    Adam,

    It’s too bad you must spend your days litigating. Your sonnets are lawful and orderly, to say the least, and you are well qualified to be one of society’s unofficial legislators. But, do you truly garden as well? You seem to understand the tension between the exuberant garden and the controlling hand. God knows, these days keeping my own garden in check has become a nightmare.

    Reply
    • Adam Sedia

      Thank you! Litigating puts food on the table, and it is enjoyable in its own way. In some ways it is not very different from poetry. I do just enough gardening to know how hard it is.

      Reply
  6. David Watt

    Adam, your sonnets resonate with consistently vivid imagery and portray aspects of nature in a way befitting poets of the Romantic period.

    Reply

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