MORE THAN I CAN CHEW?
( A Sonnet to be muttered under the breath.)

The thought was not amenable to test.
It could not be enumerated lest
The integers assume a form, like Time
That ticks away the heart or marks the rhyme.

As only an impression, nothing more,
It stuck somewhere within me -- in the craw --
And beat itself around my source of thought,
But everything suggested came to naught.

I could, yet could not do what it had said.
It was an instrument for all self doubt.
I ran it by me twice. Each time I read
A futile hope, but threw the beggar out.

I will go forth wrapped in some dignity,
O even if it gets the best of me.

Jay Cohen