DE AMICITIA: A Friendship Sonnet

In response to Mike Singleton's Sonnet Challenge "Write a Sonnet or Villanelle about Friendship" in the Vocal Social Society Group on Facebook. Still figuring out some of this Facebook stuff, so I figured I'd post it on here, even if said challenge were over. I'd been working this one for a while, wanted to launch it.

Feel the rush, as if invincible 'neath soft rains:

We ravage the lilacs, tearing out handfuls\

Do battle with blossoms, ripping up armfuls/

Suburban sprinkler hills meet bluejean grasstains;

Bursting each idol of play, now out of our reins.

Signal of showers and cloudbursts from under

The mountains, as if hoofbeats of thunder

Flaring never burnt-out force of boyful flames!

We rush like a mirage of mirror magic

Imaged in smoke and unfit to be tragic,

Wide, with all that tide of time in our names;

The lilacs give scent to the gallop of thunder,

Speed of the steed or the power under

Colts in growth break the flow of the rush mid-game.

(This is a modified Ronsardian sonnet, named for the French poet Pierre de Ronsard, which normally has a rhyme schema that goes ABBA ABBA CCD CCD. My sonnet irregularizes this schema to: ABBA ACCD FFD GGD. My meter toggles between dactyllic and anapestic, and the lines vary in length from 10 to 12 syllables. Thank you for reading!)