The Shell (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #230

Found empty on beaches, a snail's life's completion,
(But for the occasional hermit crab squatting),
The record of years of unconscious secretion,
Like an old oak tree's sawed rings, without rotting.
The exterior is rough and pointed, lining
As smooth as fired glaze, lucent, roseate, shining.
Pick one up and look deeper inside than you can.
All forgotten dreams fit snugly in living shell.
Ear-worms of time sing from the conch's well
And whisper secrets of the universe's plan.
(It's only the echo of the blood in your brain,
They say, or the pounding of the bounding main.)
The conch is -- we can reach inside, attempt to seize
Its mind. We can also try to swallow the seas.

War (Rousseau), Sonnet #229

Nations fight War because they have no choice.
Men silence with bomb, rifle, and the sword,
Trying to bury Death's insistent voice
(Though a command is just War's godlike word).
By killing each other men will kill War,
At least that's what they're told by king and czar,
Emperor, minister, and president.
A doctor, my dad had to shoot a man,
A "Jap" who burst into his patients' tent.
War keened, "First, do harm!" as the man's blood ran.
We are all divided into two camps,
Those who fight a war and those who do not.
War offers the latter up to his champs,
Then rallies them all toward riot and rot.

Portrait of Mademoiselle Alice Guerin, 1884 (Paul Cesar Helleu), and Photograph of Alice Guerin, 2008, Sonnet #228

Here's my Alice, and le mademoiselle,
One hundred and twenty-two years apart.
Perhaps reincarnation is an art,
Time dipping its paintbrush into a well,
Its empty well, and drawing forth nothing,
Which, touching dimension again, it plies
Itself (whatever that is) -- thus a thing
Of beauty, in a smile, red hair, bright eyes,
And spirit that seems familiar to men,
Is recovered and rendered new again.
The melancholia, faint with kindness,
Of the first girl, is joy on my child's face.
As it mixes new colors, time's blindness
Paints over all that it cannot erase.

Along Schnebly Hill Road, Sedona (D'Arcy Guerin Gue), Sonnet #227

Sometimes beauty is the eye of the beholder.
My sister took this photo in January.
(We're two of seven and she's seven years older.)
It is what she sees, so it means something to me.
As a small boy I was crippled and wore a brace,
Thirteen pounds of leather, rubber, laces, and steel.
It fell to her to help me put it on -- she'd kneel
And manipulate the thing with patience and grace.
It seemed there were always problems; sometimes the parts
Wouldn't mesh, or no longer fit me, or leather
Pinched muscles or skin. We'd work at it together,
And the pain of it for us wrung my sister's heart.
I see in this sunset her soul, joyful, clear-eyed,
And as compassionate as this warm sky is wide.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Moon Sonnets, Sonnets #225 and #226

Gibbous Moon at Sunrise, Sonnet #226

Change speeds. No scales, no balances remain even;
They tip, totter, weighing innumerable me's.
A morning so cold I wonder if pupils freeze.
The waning moon runs from the invisible sun.
A bare tree passes on its light from limb to limb,
Chipping away the orb's disintegrating rim.
I stop to take this picture (though I'm late for work)
Of a moment when, through clutter of trees and murk,
The exhausted, retiring moon beckons and winks,
Before, like reversed syntax, into earth it sinks.
Two days later, at precisely the same hour,
I returned -- the sky empty, the air ancient cold.
You must, I thought, do everything in your power
To stop the need to see clearly from growing old.

Fall Night (David Mikautadze), Sonnet #225

The moon says to the maple tree,
"You owe your existence to me."
Silent, the tree decides to be.
(Its leaves ruffle the wind's smooth voice.)
The moon and tree suggest a choice.
I can wish or I can rejoice.
I can happily know the night
Or yearn for knowledge of the light.
Do pages of a closed book read
Each other? Do dimensions bleed,
With time becoming space at times?
The moon and the maple tree rhyme.
Because I am given the chance,
I choose joy, even ignorance.

Click on the images to see larger versions.

The Yellow Sail (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #224

The passage of the soul -- a mess of gold,

No longer treasure or currency,
Plus cut and uncut baubles, glistening
Or dull, stored away in a sailboat's hold --
Is the crossing of a perilous sea.
Two spirits, one seeing, one listening,
Neither speaking, steer the shallow craft past
Receding shore until it's gone at last.
A stiff, cold wind fills the tall yellow sail.
The blood red bow parts each threatening wave
To another dead sailor's muffled wail,
Begging to leave his expiatory grave.
With grace, the boat might reach the farther shore,
Or leave all to rot on the ocean floor.

Three Deadly Sonnets, #221, #222, #223

Train Trestle (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #223

People still talk about Tarzan* diving
Off the south end (the north much too shallow),
Swimming upriver to the public beach.
Few recall cars and engine arriving
On either side, or a whistle's bellow,
Yet nothing's diminished its iron reach.
I once saw a man killed near the trestle.
A speedboat hit a sunken pier and flew
Up, tossing the driver backward; the screw
Bit him as the boat came down. I wrestled
A pram into the water, but he swam
To the other shore screaming, where a man
Pulled him out; as he died, the speedboat ran
On in a spiral toward the city dam.

*Johnny Weissmuller

The Snake Charmer (Henri Rousseau), Sonnet #222

The cobra hid beneath the house as we returned from church.
My father pinned him with a stick as my sister came near.
The serpent reared and flared his hood. We saw him vainly lurch
At my sister, who only leaned closer, quite without fear.

The snake charmer fingers his flute, his breath
Enchanted, a simulacrum of death
The snakes approach from curiosity.
To strike the man would end the mystery,
And leave an eternal ear-worm, a tune
Like the moaning of the coming monsoon.

Dad dispatched it with a thrust, but not right away,
Instead conducting a lesson for his children.
As he spoke of the farms where they collect venom,
The cobra danced a diminishing bob and sway.

Duel Between Onegin and Lenski (Ilya Repin), Sonnet #221

Thus in a duel the man who’s in the wrong
(In honor, good shots can be weak or strong)
Might find himself puking, stagger away
From his challenger swearing and bleeding
Out his life, supine in a dewy field.
Those who later hear of the fight will say
Of the killer, “But he’s of good breeding,
And the dead man was a fool not to yield.
After all, winning is vindication!”
Onegin killed his friend Levski over
His own jealous, vindictive flirtation
With Olga, Levski’s inconstant lover.
For both men, “honor" was nothing to trust,
Just a word for anger, ego, and lust.