E-Verser Lorna Knowles Publishes a Hilbertian Sonnet in Waccamaw. Click here to visit Waccamaw, a journal of contemporary literature.

They have begun to feel as rare as creatures
whose precarious environment requires
enclosure and eucalyptus to survive,
whose behavior in captivity is featured
on live-feed video-cam (mating desires,
grooming, food fights). What kept this pair alive?
A long marriage has preserved them well;
so too, has their Keeper. Spared the ravage
of the sick room, given a measure of grief
and doses of pleasure, when sorrow befell
them, they turned to or away within the cage,
and in the bars’ crossed shadows found relief.
At any moment the conditions here may change
and this habitat turn wild and hard and strange.