Author's note: back in the 1970s, while I was still at high school, I struggled wretchedly to write a sonnet. The following rather uncertain exercise in iambic pentameter (more or less) is the closest I got to achieving the form. Not very close, really. The first line most definitely is not iambic pentameter, and the second line only has four feet. (Try as I might, I could not perform the surgery necessary to add the missing foot.) Anyway, I published the version shown above in 1976 (not a good year for the sonnet.)

Below (undertaken purely as an exercise in form) is a revised version dating from July 2003:-

Author's note: the "Memory Flight" version is rather better than the original "Gull Flight" version in that there is less waste space - fewer syllables thrown in, empty of meaning, simply to pad out a line of iambic pentameter. However, as sonnets go, this one still leaves quite a bit to be desired.

(One problem, which will not be apparent to the casual reader, is "Vulcan." The setting is a New Zealand setting, and Vulcan quite simply doesn't fit. Another is that "mound" is a soft, eroded word which does nothing to capture the dynamic volcanic upthrust of the mountain in question, Mount Manaia, which rises above the shores of Whangarei Harbor.)

The words most heavily freighted with meaning are "Indifferent, I will not waste a sigh" - I never conquered the sonnet form, but, at this stage of my life, I couldn't care less.

At this writing (July 2003) I am in my forties. When I was at university in my late thirties, I attempted (as an academic exercise) a rather more elaborate piece of