All wildlife thrive within these healthy wetlands,
as nature there displays diversity
in all its universal majesty
so often found in solitary backlands.
Where fowls and reptiles choose to make their homelands
while undisturbed there, wild and free,
as their environments were meant to be,
there flight and plight, there need and feed meet demands.


But can surroundings ever stay serene,
when progress pushes past the wetland’s shore?
Are man’s incursions here forevermore?
Too often their insistence intervenes,
though wildlife’s too important to ignore.
Consider their existence on the scene.

This picture was taken at the Maplewood Nature Center in North St. Paul, Minnesota. I have taken several photos there. In the poem I refer to fowl and reptiles as that's what's in the image, but there are Egrets, Blue Herons, and even a nesting Sandhill Crane hiding in the reeds, that I haven't been able to get a good picture of yet. Also, a mink that has been elusive so for. I have captured a Great Horned Owl though.
This poem is a Petrarchan Sonnet. The Original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 Lines into two parts, the first part being an Octave and the second being a Sestet. The Rhyme Scheme for the Octave is typically:
a b b a a b b a.

The Sestet is more flexible. The Sestet and can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways:

c d c d c d (two Rhymes)
c d d c d c (two Rhymes)
c d e c d e (three Rhymes)
c d e c e d (three Rhymes)
c d c e d c (three Rhymes)

The rhyme scheme for this poem is: abbaabba cddcdc. Note that I used feminine iambic meter in several lines resulting in a 11th soft syllable.

In strict practice, the one thing that is to be avoided in the Sestet is ending with a Couplet (dd or ee), as this was never permitted in Italy, and Petrarch himself (supposedly) never used a Couplet Ending; in actual practice, Sestets are sometimes ended with Couplets (Sidney's "Sonnet LXXI given is an example of such a Terminal Couplet in an Italian sonnet). One ending with such a Terminal Couplet would be an Italian Sonnet, but not a Petrarchan Sonnet. Therein lies the distinction.

The Octave and Sestet have special functions in a Petrarchan Sonnet. The Octave's purpose is to introduce a problem, express a desire, reflect on reality, or otherwise present a situation that causes doubt or conflict within the speaker. It usually does this by introducing the problem within its first Quatrain (unified four-line section) and developing it in the second.

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