Thread: In an empty paddock (sonnet)

You can sit there idle ‘till cows come home
And wander out again in the morning
But it can all dissolve like ocean foam
Fret not, for you’ll have time for your mourning
If oysters didn’t give you pretty pearls
If nightingales stopped singing lullabies
If roses their petals did not unfurl
What would you do? Simply cast down your eyes?
It’s not your fault, you recycled paper
You’d planted, watered, weeded and gardened
And if it’s gone like a wisp of vapour
Why shed tears? Your heart has long since hardened
How long would you wait to catch ocean foam?
How long will you wait for cows to come home?
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Should be 10 syllables per line, I've checked, in the abab cdcd efef gd/ab form of a sonnet, so hopefully I haven't slipped in that sense.
Looking for critiques on rhyming, meaning, anything. I'm not sure if I've made my meaning clear, does anyone get the meaning of it or does it just look like I've been shambling on about cows?
Thanks in advance for any critiques I receive!

‘till should be ‘til

The expression is ‘til the cows come home, but I dunno, maybe in a sonnet anything goes.

Don’t care much for morning and mourning.

And I haven’t the faintest idea what any of it means (unless it’s something to do with an outdoor dunny) but don’t let that worry you. The only reason I’m even in this forum is because I saw the word paddock and thought, aha, an Aussie. Normally I avoid poetry like the plague.

I like it. I think I understand the meaning decently -- though I'm getting conflicting messages. In one ear I'm getting told that I shouldn't just wait for success to come to me, I should go search for it. In the other ear I'm hearing that it's all futile, my heart is hardened, and there's failure no matter what I do. I'm not getting the second message as strongly, but there are tinges of it here and there.

A few nits on the poem:

You've got the rhyming well, but as Ox pointed out, "morning" and "mourning" are pronounced identical -- more of repetition than rhyme.

Also, depending on what kind of sonnet you're doing, there's more to it than the ten syllables per line -- often there's an emphasis on having those ten syllables be in iambic pentameter, which yours is completely not. If you are eschewing that stipulation on purpose, than I applaud you. If you didn't know about it, I'm just informing you.

Also, no one talks like this ("If roses their petals did not unfurl") unless they are Yoda or someone getting frustrated with meter and rhyme while writing a sonnet. If you get a chance, making things flow more naturally (If rose petals no longer were unfurled... or If roses had no petals to unfurl) will help avoid that tell.

Oh, and I ALWAYS push for more enjambment. Hand in hand with that, I don't support capitalizing each line, but rather only capitalizing the starts of sentences. Also punctuating fully.

But those are nits -- the poem is a great start. Sonnets are hard.

I loved the sentiment expressed here.Beautifully written--seemingly effortless...Peace...Jul