Howling Dog (Paul Klee), Sonnet #437

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My Human Disguise.









It’s a dog howling at a moose,

Said her daughter, or at the moon.

To her it was a mind set loose.

It will be time to go home soon,

She said, and took the child’s hand.

Let me stay for one more minute.

She simply did not understand.

There is nothing of art in it,

Just some color daubs and scribbling,

A little malicious ribbing

Meant to make me look like a fool.

Her daughter said, It’s beautiful!

If you think so dear, you’re the boss.

She felt the slightest sense of loss.

Mont Sainte-Victoire and Chateau Noir (Paul Cezanne), Sonnet #389

I’ve lived at the foot of a mountain too,

Pike's Peak, golden palaces on its flank.

I’ve stood in snowstorms on its peak in June.

At dawn it hummed silver, at sunset blue.

A slight fog rubbed it to a hulking blank.

Full moonlight carved from it a single rune.

In time I started to ignore the peak.

I had no painter’s eye or possession

To look at it harder each day and seek

The thing I hadn’t yet seen — a vision.

Now I live near the continental divide

In the Midwest, where on a swamp’s one side

The water runs east, on the other, west.

I walk its trails often seeking a quest.

Fog Day Painting (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #382

The country fog made driving a bus dangerous,

So they cancelled school and the sky was clear by ten.

Some days we escape the day and flee, not often

Alone, but it’s fine not to be too generous.

She had the easel up by noon and a canvas,

Gessoed and ready, a blank window on a field

Of milk thistle, nimblewill, foxtail and bentgrass.

She wondered, will all this come to me, will it yield?

She left herself, wandered the field as she painted,

Circling back every hour or so to find

If her seeing was approximate or tainted,

If the scene was precisely limned or loosely lined. 

As she packed, she thought, it’s worthy of a fog day.

The photo let the easel and the painting stay.