He tried to do it right. ABAB.
Every time, though, he had to give up, foiled
By headstrong form, the rhyme scheme and the beat
He failed to marry. How a marriage failed,
He knew too well, two lives jarred askew, refusing
To line up. Love and love sonnet, both botched.
Nothing to show for all his obsessive fussing.
Better just to memorize Shakespeare’s batch.

Alzheimer’s turned his scars to cuts in water
But left him with those lines that rhymed and scanned,
And in his nursing home, he showed his daughter
The Sonnets forming in his sloping hand,
The clinching couplets that would make him famous,
Forgotten so completely they became his.