Phoenix (Hokusai), Sonnet #518

The Phoenix bursts from its egg of ashes

Every five hundred and eighteen ages.

It will spend years unfurling its plumage

Like crimson, emerald, and golden sashes,

Before it flies. The setting sun rages

In jealousy, cries “You presumptuous midge!”

The Phoenix’s bloodless heart doesn’t beat.

Only its wings that mercilessly blast

The air, and never fold, keep it alive.

Its pearl beak never opens to eat.

Just one exhalation would be its last.

Its fate is to seek and never arrive.

The Phoenix explodes and plunges to earth.

Once, ages ago, there was no rebirth.

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

My Human Disguise.

Boar Hound (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #434

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

No one knows the golden boar hound's mother,

If she’s boar or hound, or mythic Other.

He was found scratching at our farmhouse door

And though quick to accept a wooden cage,

Was soon released, being more hound than boar,

Nothing to fear, with his eyes of great age.

His eight fleecy legs (some seemed more like arms)

Caused him to stumble and sometimes crawl,

A monster, yes, though not without his charms.

His tusks could draw images, like an awl,

Scrapping planks or smooth stone, which he would hide

(Though we could always find them when we tried)

About the farm — scenes from the past, our past.

The day he left we feared would be our last.

The Satyr and the Traveler (Walter Crane), Sonnet #358

The goat man had always felt it unfair,

That he must clutch his bare chest in cold air.

The only thing worse was to look a fool

By wearing some dumb animal's wool.

He despised all humans, their sickly lust,

Their clothes and their suspicious trust of trust.

One winter's day he met a traveler,

Plump and well-clothed but for her sandled shins.

He decided to play the caviller,

And ridicule weakly man's meager sins.

The girl blew on her fingers in reply,

Then offered the satyr a steaming stew.

When she breathed on his bowl, he asked her, "Why?"

"To heat! To cool!" she cried, her lips the clue.

Medusa (Caravaggio), Sonnet #352

An old woman nodding off on the porch
Awoke when the dying moon rose, a torch
Of wan fire colder than a fractured bone
Plucked from a filthy stream. She'd been alone
For ninety years in a house full of pests
(Tucked in her lap some dessert for her guests);
Rat, spider, possum, silverfish, and snake
Crept in each night from the surrounding brake.
She combed serpents writhing out of her head
With the splayed fingers of the recent dead
Who'd come to have their way with her, young sports
Who with one look had turned to milky quartz.
A wind whispered and slipped beneath her jaw.
The crescent moon was the last thing she saw.