Sonnet: I Did Not Want to Be the One to Say It’s Over by Martin Willitts Jr.

I paddled out on a lake of music.

The rain was speechless,

pretending to be mute, at loss

for words, momentarily, but really

it was mostly pinpricks of rain,

easily ignored. The rain was spread thin.

The rain took time pacing the shore

line in contemplation.

I had eased the canoe onto the creek bed.

I had returned empty-handed.

There was dampness in my bones.

I had no thought of the future,

what it might bring. I was waterlogged,

dripping music, an unhurried waltz.







Martin Willitts Jr won the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016, and a Central New York Individual Artist Award for "Poetry On The Bus".