View From The Dunes (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #470

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









I asked my youngest why the grains of sand,

After millennia in roiled water,

Grow only so small and no smaller.

(Wouldn’t gold dissolve if endlessly panned?)

“Maybe they’re too tiny,” said my daughter,

“To be abrasive anymore.” Last year,

A storm raked off ten feet of grassy dunes,

Leaving jagged walls and crumbling wounds.

The long-buried sand was the same as here

On the upper ledge, unchanged under tons’

Gravitational grinding of eons.

The waves, gale-wind-whipped, tip over and drop,

And even in the stillest air never stop.

Each grain of sand changes less than the suns.

A Near Infinity, Sonnet #393

A near infinity away a rock

Lies on the surface of a blasted moon.

No one will ever see it, but it’s there.

An asteroid will slam nearby — the shock

Will leave only a crater or a dune,

Slowly cooling in its star’s blinded glare.

In every sky scraper a fire escape

Stacks thousands of risers and treads of taupe

Or sage, sometimes both, lined with painters tape,

And handrails of pipe never gripped with hope.

Millions of miles of stairs on our planet

Made just in case, which men will never see.

Four dimensions count the hidden quiet,

Fill the near infinite with the empty.