Rondeau for Ruth

He knew euphoria the day they met.

He’s often felt so between then and now.

Was it the shy smile or searching brown eyes

Or how her eyelashes would lower and rise,

Like glinting perfection taking a bow?

How could any-day simple chance allow

Strangers meeting to result in a vow

And forty years devoid of pain or lies?

He knew euphoria the day they met.

His eye is protected by her eyebrow.

Their two hearts beat with a whisper and wow,

Not felt, but heard, always in sweet surprise.

No thought between them arrives in disguise.

They will never fail to remember how

They knew euphoria the day they met.

For Ruth

Though we missed our daughters up in Michigan, it was lovely to spend eleven days alone with my wife Ruth Diamond-Guerin. This is by way of love and appreciation.

For Ruth

Is there just one universe?

There the stars and here the cafe.

Hidden lights illuminate the tables.

The various darknesses immerse

Men and stars in dissolving clay.

Are both god and science fables?

The universes are infinite,

They say, and time does not exist.

But here we are and there the stars.

The air is full of perfume and wit,

And a wine too ancient to resist.

All else is beyond, late and far.

Let's nibble galaxies and swallow suns.

I'll count my hours with you by ones.

Star

What is more banal than a star,

More hackneyed than: “they shine afar?”

Each one is just within our sight,

An ageless remnant of delight. . . . 

Uh, I meant to say of old light.

The Milky Way is such a bore;

It proves the old saw that more

Is less, babes in a matron’s dress,

Secrets we never fail to guess.

I stare at them under duress.

But when I look into your eyes,

Their light is as new as sunrise.

The Kiss (Francisco Hayez), Sonnet #569

 

A critic said what poets write about

Is rubbish, it’s how they write that matters — 

And that no one can write well about love.

The nonsense of a literary tout,

Who delights in poetry he shatters

With a crippling whip in a satin glove.

I don’t remember our first kiss, the kite

She’d made was loose and sailing out of sight.

It was probably then, on our first date,

When the only thing to do was to wait

For the kite’s return, like a falcon called —

Embracing, we felt tongues and lips scald.

The moisture and heat since then are the same,

Without diminution, beyond a name.

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

My Human Disguise.

Chrysanthemum (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #433

For Ruth

The flower has a purpose beyond beauty,

A regenerative function we don’t see.

Its power, in being, is touched, and gives,

And by this mutual exchange, it lives.

Its perfect kind grows on just to be seen.

Its petals glow, even at dusk, a sheen

That’s inner lit, only darkness can dim.

In sunlight it fills the eye to the brim.

My love, the chrysanthemum is you,

As columbines and tiger lilies are too.

Every summer our garden expands,

Pouring, into the cupping of our hands,

Perfumes, petals, color and energy,

Filling a single life with you and me.

Posted on our 41st wedding anniversary.

Tiger Lilies, Sonnet #304

For Ruth

They lined the country roads in Illinois.
Great banks of red-orange blossoms, green stems,
And pale pink tubes waiting to splay open --
Our courting flower, this remembered joy.
I drove those roads to see you most weekends
In the battered Mustang I had back then.
Fifty miles of lily-lined road before
I reached the highway, with fifty miles more,
Until I kissed your lips and took your hands,
And walked with you on Lake Michigan sands.
Now the lilies open every July
In our back yard, and up and down the street.
They are one answer to our loving's "why."
Their scent is faint, but unearthily sweet.

Note: The spelling of "unearthily" is not
strictly speaking correct; I'm combining
"earthy" with "unearthly."

Couple Walking in the Forest (Van Gogh), Sonnet #272

For Ruth

We call them our "woods walks," as though the trees

Walk with us; one follows, one leads -- each sees

Us, seldom hand in hand because the light,

Leaf-filtered, tinted, already binds us,

And should we ever become lost, finds us.

We're tall oaks branching each other's delight.

You say you always find here perfect calm.

I feel it too, my love, I feel through you.

In a leaf, I see tracings of your palm,

Read our future, not real, perhaps, but true.

Sometimes you walk ahead and look for birds,

The screech owl (unicorn!) in its knothole,

Never yet seen, though you search every bole,

Your face a lovely sonnet without words.

Posted on our 38th wedding anniversary.

Sundial (Escher), Sonnet #246

The motionless gnomon slowly persists,
Pointing the hour in pinching the sun's rays,
While hands of a clock clench their tiny fists,
And sheets of squared paper reckon the days.
A clock can't tick in space, though comets pass,
Light doesn't exist until it falls upon
A planet, your eyes, or a cloud of gas.
Thus, a love is engendered by the sun.
Ruth, our days number some 15,000,
And more than 400,000 the hours.
Let's not waste a moment counting the sand.
What's left us is unknowable, but ours.
I will stand still, watch you encircle me --
No shadows, just the light of your beauty.