For Michael Antman
1
My daughter brought these stones from New Zealand.
At first we arranged them in a circle,
The white veins touching, mostly, band to band.
They seemed to me a kind of miracle,
Holding everything we know inside,
And all we don't brought in from far and wide.
But soon that seemed too pat an arrangement,
With a history, yes, and silent, but,
However Zen-like, it didn't hit my gut.
The circle must be cut open and bent,
As the thing it did not contain, allow,
Was questions (the world just is, here and now?).
The stones, like this 200th sonnet, speak,
And answer with a question what we seek.
2
To ask or not to ask, that is to be.
No answer has been satisfactory.
I can't know the secrets of my own soul,
Because, like Richard Wilbur's star-nosed mole,
I can only pass by the graves of men,
Whose own souls, if at last revealed to them,
May be whispering, like wind in the grass --
Language meant only for the dead en masse.
Instead, I'll ask for nothing but the sun
To answer with its rising tomorrow,
And listen to cicadas, one by one,
Respond with obliterated sorrow.
I love you all. That's an answer for now.
Someday I might learn more. I'll let you know.
Michael Antman has been the editor of this sonnet sequence
since I began it in February of 2011. His unerring ear, tact,
and encouragement, are deeply appreciated, as is his friendship.
The stones were collected as a gift for me by my daughter Alice Bea Guerin.