And Day Brought Back My Night, by Geoffrey Brock

It was so simple: you came back to me
And I was happy. Nothing seemed to matter
But that. That you had gone away from me
And lived for days with him — it didn't matter.
That I had been left to care for our old dog
And house alone — couldn't have mattered less!
On all this, you and I and our happy dog
Agreed. We slept. The world was worriless. 

I woke in the morning, brimming with old joys
Till the fact-checker showed up, late, for work
And started in: Item: It's years, not days.
Item: you had no dog. Item: she isn't back,
In fact, she just remarried. And oh yes, item: you
Left her, remember? I did? I did. (I do.)

And Day Brought Back my Night, by Geoffrey Brock.

Brock writes a very well-crafted sonnet - Shakespearean, in fact. This is the marvel of meter: Note how the rhymes in the first stanza are the same words, as if to convey that the speaker and his lover mirror one another perfectly.

As reality sets in: Note how the rhymes are suddenly off-track in the second stanza.  Which is to say that the perfectly mirrored rhymes in the first stanza are simply in his wistful imagination.  He may see the two of them together again, but in actually he is simply looking at himself in the mirror.  

The final couplet is also noteworthy. There is severe enjambment in the penultimate line: you (meaning the speaker) dangles in space, abruptly removed from its verb and object. Still, there is saving grace in poetry, especially with such a venerable form as a sonnet: The couplet is not a mirrored rhyme, but simply a familiar, solid one.

Lastly, the way Brock enunciates (I do.) in the video sounds like adieu.  Which makes it an even more brilliant sonnet, truly!

Geoffrey Brock