Sonnet I: Our love, it seems to me...

[crataegus]

Sonnet I

Our love, it seems to me, is as a book:
By most who just see covers thrown away
Amid the trinkets tossed without a look,
And only with the surest holds its sway.
Your face, it seems to me, is as a stone:
Worn away by time and hurt and wanton
Hate the others try to paste onto your bones,
But craggy lines refuse to hide the you within.
I wish I could tell you my love, my dear
What your voice, your sound, your crooked sight mean
To me, but I cannot, and ne’er will, I fear.
When the game is called, play’rs taken from the scene,

The thing I fear most in so wide the world
Is after losing you, they broke the mould.

[richardpoet]

seems to me you lost the way a little, 3 lines with 11 syllables and one with 12... check lines... 7, 8, 11, 12...

[crataegus]

That was actually a conscious choice on my part to start distancing the reader. It was a way at hinting at the volta in the final couplet without making anything obvious. I also went back and forth between iambs and trochees in the later quatrains to further destabilise things.

[Leanne]

You know, I've read your justification for meter changes and to be honest, I don't see the point. This is a gentle sonnet with a very traditional purpose -- and if your volta needs hinting at, it's not a strong one. Which this isn't, since there's no real "turn", it's more of a continuation of the previous thoughts. It does, however, act as a summation and in many sonnets, that's quite enough. Personally I don't mind if a sonnet is metric or non-metric, rhymed or non-rhymed, or even if it has other than 14 lines. If I were to pick where the very mild volta occurs in this, it's not the final couplet but L9 -- and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, Milton for example would have his volta anywhere after L4. To that end, I'd suggest getting rid of the line break before L13 (I'm not a fan of it anyway, an Elizabethan sonnet looks neater in one block).

What does bother me is that the couplet is a huge cliche. That weakens it immensely from my perspective and it's a shame, because your opening lines in particular are quite lovely.