A Roller, Two Peregrine Falcons and a Long-Eared Owl with her Young (Francis Barlow), Sonnet #245

The peregrines' talons have eased up on their branch.
They're freely balanced, committed, ready to launch.
The plump roller, caught in its amatory dive,
Could be dragged to earth, ripped up while still half alive.
One eyes a clutch of three barred owlets; yes, kindred,
And guarded by their mother, but dozing, well-fed.
An owl must eat a mouse every day without fail
(As I must). The eagle wolfs fish, coughs up the scales.
A mouse pees, as it goes, to leave a trail back home.
A kestrel reads the yellow line like a poem,
Knowing at the beginning or end he will find
The answer to the deepest question of his kind.
The peregrine abandons the owlets to rise
And at 200 miles an hour crashes what flies.

Bodhidharma (Hakuin), Sonnet #244

For Lucien Stryk

His eyes tell us he grasps nothing he sees.

Nothing like shock, wonder, or puzzlement
(His purpose, to see only by degrees),
His response is a dog's to a new scent.
The more he's enlightened, the more dour,
Saddened by the presumption of a flower,
Disillusioned by the barred owl's power --
Endless patience where the field mice cower.
As he stared into a cave for nine years,
Did he presume to think he saw it all,
What is, what isn't, on a granite wall,
That makes a mockery of monks and seers?
Here he's a presence more paper than ink,
All marrow, nothing more, no sense, no think.

Lucien Stryk was one of my writing teachers
at Northern Illinois University. A fine teacher
and poet, he was very influential in
bringing Zen poetry to the United States 
through his translations and interviews. He
was a good friend and mentor.

Inner Courtyard, Strandgade 30 (Vilhelm Hammershoi), Sonnet #243

I assume these windows look on others,
But not the one I'm looking through at them.
The pupil, an irradiated gem,
Reflects upon each pane and its brothers.
A hundred years old, once a glazier's pride,
The lights have been etched by wind, dust, and rain,
By the hard scrubbing at faint time's stain,
And the gaze of hundreds who've long since died.
One window, open, catches the late sun.
As if in lonely rebellion, it flares,
Illuminating a room: no one's there.
Nothing moves. There is nothing to be done.
I close the window with a single thought.
What we see through is never what we've sought.

St. Michael Weighing Souls (Kartner Meister), Sonnet #242

No soul weighs more than the flesh it impounds.
It grows with time, then begins to vanish,
Looks less like a soldier than how one sounds,
Marching off. God of beginnings, Ganesh,
Blasts his trumpet at the birth of the child,
As Michael weighs its soul for the first time.
The devil scoffs, his self-righteousness riled,
Skulks nearby, shields his eyes from the sublime.
The child, perfectly weightless, is handed
To Buddha, and with one hand slap, branded.
Eighty years on, he again stands naked
In the balance, whispers a list of seers,
Of those who loved his soul for its own sake,
Then, like devils long ago, disappears.

With The Eagle (Klee), Sonnet #241

He can be only the smallest part of our lives.
Over the years I've watched him not even a day.
In spring, circling a pond near leafless woods, he dives
And, skimming the water, dips his talons -- his prey,
A small bass. He lands on a dead tree and devours
All in seconds. Motionless, he'll rest there for hours.
When the trees leaf out he is much harder to see.
A nest, big as a pram, disappears, and his mate,
Whom he uxoriously trades nesting duty,
Will fly off to hunt for herself what he just ate.
The eagle sees me more clearly than I see him.
He doesn't care for me, so I remain a dim
Apparition he never completely ignores,
From caution, a mystery he never explores.

I Have, I Had (Matta), Sonnet #240

When they gut old buildings, first they divide
Them into mountains of aluminum
And copper, structural steel and gypsum --
Then the ponderous wrecking ball collides.

One birthday, I received a lead army,
Painted soldiers, heavy, but pliable.
I broke the head off of one and, to my
Surprise, they all broke. Who was liable?

We wasters of yesterdays! Of sorrows
Our dying memory dimly borrows!
The meteorite I held in my hand,
The man who pointed a gun at my head,
As of today have been thoroughly banned
From being, soon being nothing I've said.

The Two Goats (Gustave Dore), Sonnet #239

In Memory of Jim McNiece

A cataract has cloven the mountain
For centuries -- unnumbered leaves and stones,
Ripped tree limbs, clots of mud, and broken bones,
Fall for miles in the deafening fountain.
A sycamore tree topples in a burst
Of lightning, and forms a treacherous bridge
From a mossy patch to a granite ridge.
Two old goats cross (neither arriving first)
And butt heads at the middle of the tree,
Gently, a nudge, a token of greeting,
Of grudging respect, then a wild bleating
Of hatred and threat. There'll be no treaty.
Only one backs up for a running start.
The other charges, blasts his hornlike heart.

Jim McNiece was my writing teacher and dear
friend at Northern Illinois University. He was
a merciless editor, expunging the lazy, prolix,
or innaccurate word or phrase. I thought of him
as I rewrote this poem many times. We also
butted heads more than once.