Ice Storm, Sonnet #547

 

The insistence of freezing rain

Can darken an entire town,

Bringing a million branches down,

Taxing the chainsaw and the crane . . .

Or it can glaze limb and berry

So lightly it melts as it grows

And only the frailest twig bows . . .

This, the weight we all carry.

This ice vanishes in an hour,

Once the sun ceases to hide,

But before the bushes have dried

Great murmurs of starlings devour

Without desperation or greed

Every trace of flesh and seed.

Note: Photograph by the author.

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My Human Disguise.

Philosophy, 1899 (Gustav Klimt), Sonnet #459

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My Human Disguise.

That being and nothing and time

Are the three dimensions of mind,

Qualia same in sense, not kind,

Is more than a plausible rhyme.

All unquestionable questions

Have been asked, answers propounded,

By men who offer suggestions

As truth — and we are astounded!

But what takes me is the beauty

Of one idea (though not its words,

Elusive as murmuring birds),

A glimpse of my own purity.

Combined they’re an absurdity.

Nothing is found in surety.

Friedrich Nietzsche (Edvard Munch), Sonnet #446

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My Human Disguise.

He stands as if on the opposite rail —

On the same old circumambient bridge —

From the man with two strangers on his trail.

His forehead is a rain-carved granite ridge.

Though he seems composed, thoughtful, hands steady,

He might be going insane already.

The other’s panicked cry doesn’t make noise,

While Fritz shadows his pain in equipoise.

They say his sly sister Elizabeth

Let his mustache grow to cover his teeth

And tongue that in a mock rictus of death

Would twist and grind, never ceasing to seethe.

He called himself a nitroglycerine

Antidote for no god, if not for sin.