Harvest in the Black Hills

#102

I've wondered how they kept the blades that sharp
For such cutting when they struggled with scythes.
Hay is tough, dullness only plucked it like a harp;
Why some men left the harvest to their wives.
Today, machines can cut and bale a field
Within hours, but can't increase the yield.
The flung bales crush the serried rows
Of severed stalks, but scattered straws
Defy the yield like impudent scofflaws,
Yet to be turned under by the plow.
We keep our distance, merciful and shy,
And dare not bend a stalk with shoe or eye.

In memory of Lucien Stryk, poet, teacher, and friend.

(Photo taken by the author.)

Light of the World (Peter Blume)

#101

The light of the world is an outside light?
A being of gadgets, cornices, plinths,
And networks of hidden, grinding parts.
What's visible is only black or white.
Its bulb lords it like a petulant prince,
Impatient with the diplomatic arts.
I have two moods, it says, I weep or laugh.
Or, in your language, I am on or off.
We yearn to praise, worry that if we pray,
We shall ignite it when we need it least.
The sunlight would dry up its meager spray.
The Light of the World turns NIGHT into DAY!
Secretly we fear and hate the beast.

Women Diving for Abalone, from "One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets" (Hokusai)

#100*

Tidal surges shorten the diving day.
Though strong and skillful swimmers, the women
Fight being thrown upon the coral reef.
Those taking a rest seem resigned to stay
Uninvolved until they resume swimming,
Brief oblivion their only relief.
An arm reaches up with its precious find
To men in a boat, not evil or kind,
Who, themselves not in any danger,
Think of that arm as one of a stranger's,
Or a breed of sea creature or goddess
Of good fortune and generosity,
Though she's merely a village wife half-dressed,
Bursting lungs from hungry necessity.

* For this, my 100th sonnet in 99 weeks, I chose this print by Hokusai, because it is No. 11 from his late series of 100 prints and drawings, published in 1830, called, variously, "One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets," and "The Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse," (evidently meaning "by a nurse to children"). Each artwork illustrates a poem. The poem, by Sangi Takamura, which accompanied this stunning print, reads: "O'er the wide, wide sea,/Towards its many distant isles,/Rowing I set forth./This, to all the world proclaim,/O ye boats of fish-folk." Many of my sonnets have taken the artwork simply as a stepping off point. In this case, the sonnet is a verbal illustration of the print, which is a visual illustration of a poem. The symmetry of that seems appropriate for Sonnet #100.

The Astronomer (Vermeer)

#99

We know no more than he knew then.
We see farther and imagine numbers
Larger, but the same old infinities
Confront us, we still count to ten,
See through mirrors dying fire's penumbra,
Envision alien cities,
And watch for asteroids to come too near.
Like him, we are empty of fear,
Assume the universe is like a globe,
To be dissected and mapped, lobe by lobe.
He touches the heavens and says a prayer,
Not for insight, guidance, or grace
(Though he longs to pierce the layers
Of darkness), but to transcend space.

Shawl (Ruth Diamond-Guerin), Ad Parnassum (Klee)

#98

Though there's no such thing, a perfected fate
Would lie in details, not some pinnacle.
Our occluded sun irradiates
Each imagined fleck and bright circle
Scarcely noticed in the mounting moments
Among our numberless joys and torments.
If we fail to see the thread in the weave,
The speck of blue gold in a lover's eye,
Look closer and ignore all reasons why.
It's more important to see than believe.
Don't wait, for in the accumulation
And remembrance of every colors' rhyme,
Each patterned and cascading emotion,
There is a pyramid worthy to climb. 

Dream City (Klee)

#97

I've lived in nine cities, but dream of only five.
Perhaps where I lived as a child were all dreamed out
In anxious ecstasies, like a bee's in its hive.
I've remapped the five over the years with new routes
Through collapsed avenues to ruined homes
And maze-like schools, to workplaces with all doors locked,
Churches painted green inside and out, and bedrooms
Where the rain leaks through cracks that won't be caulked.
I often dream the same city night after night,
Which then fades for a time from hypnogogic blight.
I run and walk and crawl these streets, and sometimes fly,
So often cityscape replaces memory,
And new rooftops erase the blackboard of the sky.
At least the me who lives these dreams is always me.

View of Fuji From the Rice Fields in Owari Province (Hokusai), Sonnet #96

The craftsman cuts the rough edges from the circle
With a curved blade and pure disregard for mistakes.
He makes none -- his ring of space rounder than the sun.
To make a thing from nothing is no miracle.
It's what his brain does each day, sleeping or awake.
He knows nothing of quantum dream stuff or neuron.
He once travelled to Mt. Fuji and walked its paths.
He admired the trees; they would make good laths.
The crater's unevenness irritated him,
And the view toward his province was nice, but dim.
Looking through a finger-thumb circle, he found
Sharpened sight. He spent hours, thus, looking around.
When he died the universe collapsed to a quark,
Even when his son took up his father's work.