To you, who move with graceful elegance…
To you, in the beautiful attire…
To you, with the seraphic appearance
That betrays a being who is higher…
Every time I am within your presence,
I slow down so that I can admire
Your mystique that holds me in reverence
And makes my heart melt like frost by fire.
Once immersed in your glowing radiance,
I stop to let your beauty inspire
Forth streams of passions of which’s sole essence
Is poets’ hearts melted by desire.
Oh, if only you were always near by,
There’d be proof that some streams never run dry.
03.20.95 – 03.28.95
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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion
and published in Perspectives, ISBN 0-9686250-0-2.
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Notes to this poem…
This was an interesting looking sonnet with its use of ellipses to start as a bunch of commas to separate items in the list of the subject’s features I wanted to include in the address didn’t feel right. The subject was some young woman I didn’t even know who was in the Dalhousie Department of Chemistry Student Lounge while I was there studying in 1995. But that’s hardly the funniest part to this story.
While the subject was beautiful, I will readily fess up this was a slight exaggeration of her beauty. What led me to write this poem was her eyes. They were absolutely magnificently sparkling and dazzling. I can still see them today, though the rest of her isn’t nearly as clear, but that doesn’t mean the memory I have of her is like some lady creature of the night with eyes glowing in the dark while the rest of her is a bit vague in detail. No, my sight of her never went past the eyes then, and it still doesn’t now.
I had intentions to write a poem about her eyes but in the brainstorming process, I came up with the rest of that first stanza in close enough to poetic format right from the brainstorming that I committed to the sonnet format and continued to finish it in whatever I could find to say to complete it. So while this sonnet wasn’t an authentic declaration to the subject, I have to say I have known a handful of young women I’ve known over the years about whom I could genuinely write such praise.
Please click here to see the only ten sonnets I have ever written.
Minh Tan's Old Poetry 
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