The Jikininki (Heian Period Scroll), Sonnet #169

The hungry ghosts of Japan eat rotting man's flesh
In penance for a life of greed and selfishness.
At night, all skeletal limbs and bloated bellies,
They see only what the rat or the maggot sees.
In sunlight, each takes on its once human disguise
And wanders its former haunts under clouds of flies.

They say the Jikininki don't want what they eat,
That demon guardians won't permit them to starve.
Some try, but their torturers dismember and beat
And shriek at them: "Now eat what our flaming swords carve!"

These sad, sympathetic souls can only be freed
By prayers of a human free of vice or greed.
Thus the ranks of the Jikininki grow; they feed
On what we leave behind, until we share their need.

The Kraken Tree, Sonnet #168

My daughters called it the Kraken Tree
And said it had dived from deep space
To make a new home of rich earth
Being fed up with the bottom of the sea.
Its tentacles, both thick and frail as lace,
Were thrust aloft by its mantle's girth.
They claimed it snapped at voles and moles
With its beak and had plenty to see
Peering into burrowing animals' holes.
In summer the beast is covered in leaves
And becomes a home to nesting birds.
I ask if either daughter still believes
In the Kraken. "Dad! It's not just words!"

So, I find the Kraken Tree on my daily walk.
Sometimes the naked trees around it look like shrieks;
In frigid cold the rubbing of the branches creaks.
A rookery at dusk, here a hundred crows squawk.
The tree stands next to a frozen river that floods.
When it recedes it leaves shelf ice around the trunk.
It's March and the tentacles begin to grow buds.
Suckers sprout just above where the squid's eyes are sunk
Into grassy, leaf-scattered dirt, blinking and blind.
The swaying of its appendages stirs the breeze,
Playfully: the sea creature has some game in mind.
He'd have me believe he's just one of many trees.
I walk on, unconvinced, for I have touched his skin,
His living bark, and sensed the consciousness within.

Convex and Concave (Escher), Sonnet #167

Geckos stick out forked tongues at each other
In their race to the top of rounded stairs,
Where they'll disappear because nothing's there.
Men climb ladders to trumpeters. Mother
Seeks to fill her empty basket with air.
Banners state the geometry of the day.
The man near the dry fountain sleeps his life away;
Because he can't understand a thing, he can't care.
Each window, pillar, arch, and capital,
Each wall, riser and tread, each finial,
Was hauled into place by now-frozen block
And tackle, which the builder left behind
(Should he someday return). Here there's no clock,
Few shadows, no lights, only double bind
Architecture, mind alleys of the blind.

Portrait Of Friederike Maria Beer (Klimt), Sonnet #166

Aphrodite got into my automobile.
She lit a cigarette and said, "Take me away
From this nonsense . . . or maybe I should take the wheel."
We were surrounded by creatures from a Noh play,
A thousand goblins, samurais, ghosts, and warlords.
We sped off from those beseeching, sex-addled hordes.
Alone with her, I saw a matron, past her prime,
In a Persian coat with a tattered gray collar.
"I know what you're thinking," she said, "that I'm
Old and tired, a spent vessel, not worth a dollar."
She was still as beautiful as eternity.
I looked in the mirror: "You mean a lot to them."
"That rabble?" she replied, "they aren't even men!
The gods conjure them up to taunt and torture me."
She touched my cheek. I turned to her. The car was empty.

"It's Tradition, That Makes It Ok" (Taylor Carpenter), Sonnet #165

"Nothing is too normal," the Add Man likes to say,
As each day he brings a new thing into this world.
His pockets are filled with walnuts with ideas curled
Inside. "It's time!" he postulates, "to crack away!"

The butt of his ax frees ten trillion telephones
And a machine for turning metal into bones.
For fun he introduces a nasty pop star
And rewrites the extinction of the dinosaur.
He throws us all a scare with a meteorite,
Then he warms the globe, or doesn't -- though he still might.

His porker has been with him since its ear was tagged
With instructions to eat the empty walnut shells.
He's chomped on them for ages and only once gagged.
Our hero often says, "There's Hell, but we like hells."

A Murmuration of Starlings (Sonnets #163 and #164)

#164

Sixty thousand draw arabesques in formation.
Are they not hive-minded (doesn't each one
Each day turn the murmuration its way
Just once?), and a miracle of concentration?

They gather in the late autumn afternoon sun,
Purpose hidden behind each cascading array.
It's said their wings never come closer than seven
Inches, even with the most abrupt turn or dive,
Or clustering darkness that their rising leavens.

Perhaps they simply close their eyes and trust
To surrounding air sounds to stay alive.
With every change in direction they thrust
Forward, or drop, or turn, or rise, or stall --
Not one will falter, wing awry, or fall.


#163

Some scientists hypothesize
That a starling murmuration
Aggregates them to synchronize
And make one mind from a nation.

Like oscillating overtones
Of a guitar string's harmonic,
Each bird emits a low sonic
Signal to each bird's hollow bones.

Or, perhaps, their wings carve the air
Into symbols they all can read,
Like instructions, that tell them where
They'll soon find berry, grub, or seed.

Or do they so adorn the sky,
Just to do it, no reason why?

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Here's a video of a stunning example of a murmuration of starlings.

Elemental (Sonnets #161 and #162)

#162

There's an idea (fake as this pyrite ball is gold),
That these shapes possess some elemental structure --
"A pyramid breaks into triangles and square."
My New Math teacher once, patiently, told
Us a plane held infinite points. I wasn't so sure.
I asked, if I take a sharp pencil to paper
And make a million dots the paper won't turn black?
It's a concept, he answered angrily, not fact!
Cube, sphere, prism, octahedron, and elliptic
Palm stone -- some machine cut, some grown, some nature-made --
Arranged on my highboy, formulate a cryptic
Code of concepts curiosity can't evade,
Though we examine them without penetration.
Their rigid simplicity mocks contemplation.


#161

Simple. Elemental. Basic. Fast. Essential.
Are these the bricks and mortar of the universe
Or the toys and pastimes of a collective mind?
It's true, some find them holy and reverential,
Expressions infinitely eloquent, yet terse,
Or like paintings, not quite finished, though signed.
Do lines along two axes meet only to end
Or pass on into a negative world designed
To balance everything, or do all lines there bend
And nothing here is ever perfectly aligned?
The mind, like gravity, tends to make things rounded.
Ideas are circuitous; words circle, spiral.
Convictions are light trapped in a mirror-lined ball,
But no line stops a line; no thought is unbounded.