Poetry Response #5 "A World of Light"

This sonnet strays from a lyrical form when the author, John Reibetanz, begins to react to the children’s free time by the pond. His tone and diction suggest that these kids are close to him, possibly his nieces and nephews, godchildren, or even his own. He remembers them in a familiar place, a setting of greenery—trees, soft grass—near a pond; maybe they were at their farm, a place they visit only in the summer, where iced tea is always fresh and the kids run with horses until sundown. Maybe they tried to jump into the pond on uncharacteristically hot days but the author, their father/uncle/supervisor dissuaded them against it, instead pointing out the bumpy frog just inches from the banks of the pond. They probably kept a net handy next to the pond for fishing or de-mucking the waters (occasionally), and the author handed it to the oldest boy, silently granting him authority over the other curious youngsters. The sonnet is purposefully vague, offering room for embellishment in the reader’s mind, but it rarely goes off on tangents. The author writes with wistful remembrance of a time when his kids we occupied for hours with the little frog, creating traps and snares to catch more to make a family. Each stanza is an entire poetic sentence, laced with imagery and emotion leaking from his core. His diction is colloquial, relatable to every father who wants his little girl to stay by his side with her dolls and his little boy to keep playing in mudpits, never growing up, never losing their innocent curiosity about the world around them. But in the last stanza, the tone shifts with the change in scenery: the grass dying, winter coming, his children growing another year older, putting another year between summer memories on the farm. Eventually, they will be his age, worn down by life experience, lacking energy to waste in the open country fields. His children wither with their summer home—as it weakens, so do their spirits; as it crumbles, so does their unconditional trust in others; as the grass hardens, so do their hearts to the outside world. This sonnet shifts from an autobiography to a flower poem to a final elegy of his precious childrens’ virtue.