CRITIQUE PLEASE: A sonnet about spring and love

There are so many excellent poets on Gather that you've inspired my interest in poetry. Last night I wrote my first sonnet, inspired by all of you plus a call for sonnets from NPR's "Prairie Home Companion." The assignment is to write 14 lines, rhyming or not, about love (perhaps related to spring).

Most rhyming sonnets alternate the rhyming lines, but -- given the emphasis on love and the flexibility of contemporary sonneteers -- I made every two lines its own rhyming "couplet." Please give me your critical feedback on whether or not you feel this couplet format works for the piece, and what you would change if it were you. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's the link to the NPR call-for-entries for those of you who would like to enter your own ode of love: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/ (see lower right of page). Deadline is April 12. Meanwhile, here's mine:

A Walk O'er the Ridge

It's raining on the mossy path toward home,

not unlike the sadness of being alone.

Around the bend will be a ridge, dotted with pines.

Spring flowers bloom there – random, without confines.

Today I'll stop to smell the blooms, and rest.

I'll rest from walking and from treking this quest

of finding true love amongst all life's mess.

I pluck a wet bloom, and inhale its sweetness.

The honeyed smell of petals brings youth anew;

wilting flower in hand, I skip from this view.

Again towards home I rush now with gusto --

true love has been found ... without a new beau.

My walk to the ridge gleaned knowledge of few:

There's no better love, than loving of you.

[A note about sonnets: My research turned up that traditional sonnets set out an immediate dilemma, followed by an about-face in line 9, followed by a two-line conclusion on lines 13 and 14 that solves the dilemma. Sonnets use 9 to 11 syllibles per line, with 14 lines in all.]