“Examine me, O Lord, for I have loved the trivial”—
I’ll tell you “Barney’s friendly,” never “He’s convivial.” 
I’ll always say, “It rained a lot,” never “It was pluvial.” 
And I’ll declare this soil is silty but never peg it as alluvial. 

The goal may be centered in my sight, but never is it foveal, 
and I will laugh and joke and all but never call me jovial. 
A crocodile from India? I’ll never call it a gavial, 
German count? Don’t refer to him as margravial. 

It’s a rock slide at the foot of the hill, never a pile of rocks, colluvial, 
and this here’s a cicada shell, though some might call it exuvial. 
My knee joint’s filled with fluid (you might say synovial), 
and Jupiter’s moons are in orbit—you might yell, “Circumjovial!” 

And by golly, a four-way stop’s straightforward—some may say quadrivial, 
but a roundabout’s a roundabout, and that, my friend, is nontrivial! 

Author’s Note:

This poem is a sonnet that borrows its first line from the fifth sonnet of Barbara Hamby’s 9 Sonnets from the Psalms (in her book All-Night Lingo Tango, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). My poem is a sort of play on “Sonnenizio,” with the repetition obviously the sound “vial” in the sonnet’s end rhymes.

Publisher’s Note:

For details about Kim Addonizio’s invention, see “Playing With Forms: Sonnet + Addonizio = Sonnenizio” by Kenneth Ronkowitz in the Poets Online blog (16 January 2009); link retrieved on 15 December 2025:
https://poetsonline.blogspot.com/2009/01/playing-with-form-sonnet-addonizio.html

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. With Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, he co-edited Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015, 2020, and 2024) and for Best of the Net (2018), and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, Beckemeyer is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his late wife would have celebrated their 63rd anniversary in November 2024.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to selected works, and to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the latter link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Gardener’s Caesura, ekphrastic cheribun by Beckemeyer in homage to his wife, Patricia (1942–2024); awarded Second Place in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2 and published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 24, August 2024)

⚡ Megarhyssa, ekphrastic poem by Beckemeyer in Issue 14 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (August 2022), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ The Color of Blessings in Issue 5 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (October 2020), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ Featured Artist in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); showcasing Beckemeyer’s poetry, prose poetry, and insect photography

⚡ Words for Snow, a prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 9, Spring 2018), which was selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2019