Fateful Hour At Quarter to Twelve (Klee), Sonnet # 289

The waxing quarter moon, a pendulum,
Swings from eleven ten to forty-six,
Its math always slightly wrong in sum,
Its path a leaning gravity can't fix.
We stand beneath the clock-faced obelisk
And with tiny leaps try to grasp the disc.
I knew a witch once who wore sunglasses
When the hour's two hands approached midnight.
She said it had nothing to do with light,
But the way the dark turned to molasses.
She feared nothing more than the coming day,
Except its damn'd tendency to stay.
We're sleeping now with no time to time out,
Or a moon to wane, or a dream to doubt.

Creation of the Birds (Remedios Varo), Sonnet #288

The owl's facial disks concentrate sound;
Her deep-set eyes see darkness as daylight.
What she eats is terrified to be found
And will starve itself to stay out of sight.
How can she be the creator of flight,
Of song, wood, and water birds, and raptors?
She writes with music and paints with the moon,
And tolerates a mechanical goon,
Because it soothes her destructive raptures.
From the condor to the tiniest wren,
All fowl suffer the tattoo of her pen.
An idea she can't set free, she captures.
On her breast rests an ancient violin
With strings that sing only in Avian.

Personage Throwing a Stone at a Bird (Miro), Sonnet #287

Personage! Oh, you personage, you.
Beluga-pale, belly button-eyed bonze.
You deep. Your lipless brains all tempered bronze.
What you won't do to be no parvenu.
I know, the hot sands blister your five toes,
And where the other five are no one knows.
A shoe, a tie, a scrap of clean clothing
Might mitigate universal loathing
Of your base beginnings and low learning
And quell your bowels' insistent churning.
Now don't, I warn you. I know you have heard
Desperate deeds oft undermine men's minds --
Wiped clean, they eagerly embrace all kinds.
But we'll hate you hard if you stone that bird!

Northern Harrier Hawk (Audubon), Sonnet #286

The Red-tail tracks the field mouse by its pee
With eyes that see inside nothing to see.
At one hundred and twenty miles an hour
It dives from great heights to clutch and devour.

But the Harrier doesn’t hunt by surprise.
She intimidates and terrorizes.
I've watched her, the golden chest and white rump,
Wings broad and balletically whirling pump,
Cross and cross low the same small field of grain,
Crash to the ground, then hunt the field again.
I first saw her flying straight at my eyes.
She must not have seen my human disguise.

Steering around me as she would a pole,
She dropped behind me and swallowed a vole.

Night Fishing at Antibes (Picasso), Sonnet #285

The Spanish mackerel and the flounder
Are not deceived by the fishermen's globes.
Let's ask if they seek to die by the spear.
Raging, the spinning hot moon founders,
And the old Mediterranean sphere
Of dead tides rolls as scaly fish disrobe.
The old Neptunian fraud has blown his top,
While two young ladies lick their lollipop.
Of course, they have a cycle for escape,
And it's water, not men, uproar, not rape.
They seek the tingle trill of the near miss,
A bad man's rough caress but thrilling kiss.
They bike off when all goes drowsy and still.
The fishermen sigh . . . return to the kill.

The Night Wind (Charles Burchfield), Sonnet #284

The night wind turns the yard chimes into knells.
The chimney will topple into the yard.
The air the wind strikes, permanently scarred,
Seeks the oak knot where the screech owl yells.
The night wind lull lasts for hours, humming
In the pines and fooling crows into sleep.
The squirrel cringes in his leafy keep,
Ready for the coming vast summoning.
The night wind turns all windows into eyes,
Blindless and staring at the nothingness,
Invisible until it caresses
(Like light) a thing -- a branch that screams and sighs.
The night wind beseeches me to come out
To play with him -- still nervousness and doubt.

Freight Train (Charles Burchfield), Sonnet #283

Our frozen January bends the rails the trains
Straighten as they go at one, three and four A.M.
I'm awake as I am each night at this hour
Anticipating the hot whistle blast refrains
At three crossing barriers, each warning the same,
To stop this beast for you is beyond my power . . .
We knew the day of the hobo would soon return,
Just as they once jumped off to camp on an island
Two miles upstream from the old house, to strip and burn
Whole trees each night to warm and cook for a thousand.
I can't imagine (believe in) the engineer,
A life devoted to go, to stop, and to fear.
He must have dozed just now because I cannot hear
A sound but the thump of freight cars rolling nearer.