Today’s Poem of the Day, “Inheritance,” by the contemporary formalist poet Jean L. Kreiling (b. 1955), sketches a taut, poignant narrative in the fourteen lines of a Shakespearean sonnet. Three quatrains, rhymed ababcdcdefef, sketch the story’s rising action: a ring passed down to the speaker’s sister is a source of friction, albeit joking, and an occasion of quiet envy. The closing couplet delivers a sobering insight: What, when we covet our neighbor’s goods, are we really asking for? 
 
The author of three books of poetry, “Shared History,” “Arts and Letters and Love,” and “The Truth in Dissonance,” Ms. Kreiling lives on the Massachusetts coast. She is Professor Emerita of Music at Bridgewater State University and a longtime member of the Powow River Poets writing group, founded by Rhina P. Espaillat. Her poems have appeared widely in journals online and off, as have her academic essays on the relation between poetry and music.