Sonny Rainshine

One summer he read rows
and rows of Elizabethan verse,
from an anthology whose jacket
was illustrated with a red rose.

That was the summer
he was in love with a sophomore
named Elizabeth Forrest,
soft and more precious than a dove.

Lovelier than verse
and theology, Beth was both
the tree and the forest—
she rose above it all.

But summer dwindles
and love loses its petals too—
His Elizabethan period closed that fall
when he met a senior named Victoria.