Coleman Glenn

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The Fair Youth’s Complaint

Well, Bill, your sonnets finally got to me,
With all their pressures to impress my seal
On waxen fruits that fruit eternally,
Et cetera, so forth, you know the spiel.
Enticed by your advice I grabbed a wife
With features fairly fine but not so strong
That they might mask my own engrafted life,
So sweetly celebrated in your song.
She birthed a boy. I staked and pruned him well;
I snipped and shaped his soul to match my own.
He blossomed, and I watched my own pride swell
Within a youth in whom my luster shone.
But oh, he burst, and spattered me with scorn!
Such bitter fruit were better left unborn.

Coleman Glenn is a chaplain and religion professor at Bryn Athyn College. In May of 2020 he was seized with a sudden inexplicable urge to write formal verse, and he hasn’t stopped since. His poems have appeared in Light’s “Poems of the Week” and in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.