four ekphrastic sonnets. My book of 200 ekphrastic
sonnets, including more than 140 images, is available at
Amazon. Search: "My Human Disguise" or my name.
I live the burden of burgeoning life,
Beginning with dropping petals and seeds,
Ending with fruit and grain cleaved by the knife.
I live the engendering of my wife,
Though she hides from me in her stitched weeds,
Ever running and climbing, though gravid,
And when I catch her, laughing and avid.
I live the flight of kestrel and songbird,
Balance murderous capture and escape,
And keep the wolf from reducing the herd.
Sometimes they must settle for mouse or grape.
I live the rain’s basting the sun’s burning
My life until the last day’s turning
Changes all I’ve grown to ripened yearning.
Autumn, Sonnet #431
Almost past its prime, my fruit falls, bruises,
Before the harvest has even begun.
Pears and peaches are picked up in the end —
Even though they rot, they’ve other uses.
The burning bush, ignited by the sun —
The apple trees, whose burdened branches bend
Almost to the grass — are both flaming red.
They’ll soon be stripped of life — barren, not dead.
My grapes tumble into the wine presses,
Where pulp turns to juice from urgent stresses.
The Argiope spider in his web still
Hungers, before hard frost, for a last kill.
My summer mate gone, I am gourd and leaf,
Nothing more. Winter will bring cold relief.
Winter, Sonnet #440
I am old and my blood won’t thaw.
I am the end. My lips are mold.
As if I execute some law,
I imprison all with the cold,
The icy and the bitter winds,
Punish spring’s, fall’s, and summer’s sins.
My eyes, nose and cheeks rot and cake.
A few green leaves cling to me still —
My young branches refuse to die.
It’s time to summon the first flake —
My sole star only time can kill —
And then to open up the sky.
When all is buried I will sleep
A tearless world that will not weep.
Spring, Sonnet #454
The vernal air smells first of earth,
Healthy rot freed of snow and frost,
A renewal not without cost
In drowned worms and corruption’s worth.
But that’s when the wind and clouds still
Suppress urgency with a chill.
Even then magnolias bud,
Crocuses and snowdrops peek
Through the dirt, while a foggy scud
Carries off the unwholesome reek.
A day passes, the sunlight blooms,
Igniting our backyard bowers.
Trailing uncountable perfumes,
A lady’s dressed just in flowers.
A lady’s dressed just in flowers.
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