Thursday, December 31, 2020

Mountain in Winter (Paul Klee), Sonnet #545











In Farewell to 2020


The mountains are covered with salt,

Withering the conifer,

Sealing up crevasse and fault,

Petrifying deer femur.

Ragged peaks are crystallized,

Great rhomboids of quartz and calcite —

The imperfect reimagined right,

Its sterility realized.

I ask you, what then is to come,

Or is this all, the obvious end?

Blink! Don’t confuse all with a sum

Of the tatters we cannot mend.

Silently it falls, the slow,

Inexorable, failing snow. 


My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello Christopher
This is your long lost first cousin
Jim Rafferty, son of your aunt Mary J (Josephine)
Guerin (Rafferty.) Regretably we never became acquainted and I only met Uncle John a few times, I believe when your family lived in Cheyene Wyoming.
I want to learn about the period of time when your family lived in the Philippines for several years as I understand it. I have married a Filipins
woman, cousin of a coworker who introduced us.
There had been a US Army Hospital in her home town of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur and I wonder if Uncle John might even have been stationed there or may at least have had to rotate through there
as one of the surgeons. Sorry about the death of your dad by the way he was an extraordinary man based only on what limited knowledge of him I accumulated. Please feel free to contact me if you’re inclined. Happy New Year!
Cheers,
Jim Rafferty
jettyjim.raff@gmail.com
503-440-1933