End of the Trojan War (Tiepolo), Sonnet #385

The painter doesn’t clearly show a single face

In the starving, struggling, victory-mad crowd.

The men inside the horse could be laughing out loud

Without fear of being heard above the fracas.

The Trickster proclaimed that the genius of his scheme 

Was revealed to him in a post-debauchery dream

By a god who refused to say its name or sex,

But who had addressed the Trickster as Regent Rex.

(An error in speaking T never repeated.)

“Do this,” said the god, “and All will be defeated.”

In later years, faced with sirens and a cyclops,

He’d beg that faceless god for more brilliant guidance,

Since his own soldiers, as fighters, proved hopeless flops.

He returned to his wife with a bow and split pants.

Pulcinella's Departure (Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo), Sonnet #384

“The voice of the people” can’t leave too soon.

The fun was almost all he could endure,

Especially making game of the poor,

Though he didn’t like being called a goon.

Oh, how he’d made the great all look the same,

Throwing merde on every “leader’s” name.

They laughed at his japes without knowing why,

And threw gold at his head with insane glee.

He’d peeked up their wives’ dresses for a fee.

He’d danced on toes defying all to cry.

The best was the gun he pulled from his hump

(Not a deformity — a holster’s bump),

And waved around the world with bulging eyes.

“See this?” he crooned, “No one who likes me dies.”

Arctic Owl and Winter Moon (Burchfield), Sonnet #383

Having rehabbed injured owls for years,
She thought they only mimicked being smart —
Deaf to no distant sound, acute seers,
Intelligent of senses, dead of heart.
Having fed, flown and loved her birds of prey,
She released them only as night took day.
They always flew strong and straight to a tree,
Perched in plain sight as if they weren’t yet free.
She thought of each one later that evening.
Would it be starving or hot ravening?
A full moon is almost a handicap
When you can hunt in total darkness.
You hover and glide, drop without a flap
Of sound: the prey dies knowing no distress.

Fog Day Painting (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #382

The country fog made driving a bus dangerous,

So they cancelled school and the sky was clear by ten.

Some days we escape the day and flee, not often

Alone, but it’s fine not to be too generous.

She had the easel up by noon and a canvas,

Gessoed and ready, a blank window on a field

Of milk thistle, nimblewill, foxtail and bentgrass.

She wondered, will all this come to me, will it yield?

She left herself, wandered the field as she painted,

Circling back every hour or so to find

If her seeing was approximate or tainted,

If the scene was precisely limned or loosely lined. 

As she packed, she thought, it’s worthy of a fog day.

The photo let the easel and the painting stay.

On the Edge (Klee), Sonnet #381

Look now, it’s time to stop screwing around.

A crow’s cracked nails clawing the frozen ground,
His ceaseless caw cacking a frozen sound,
Writing sonnets is no merry-go-round.
Our faces seek us again and again,
But there’s nothing but the sun to explain —
No sun, no poem, no rose, no weather vane.
Forget the sun you can’t see for the rain!
Theorems are no more valid than a list.
A rhyme is a lot like a broken wrist —
Both need to knit up if you want a fist. 
Sonnets are lists of theorems with no gist.
So I think of Paul Klee as my brother.
He draws not one right thing, but another.

Euphorbia (African Milk Stripe Plant), Sonnet #380

For Ruth on Our 40th Wedding Anniversary, 11/27/77

I bought this for your 21st birthday

In September 1975.

It was just one slender emerald stem —

Our wedding still two years, two months away.

Not only did your care keep it alive,

There are now more than a dozen of them

Inside our home, grown as big as the first,

And yet more — all cut from the mother tree —

We’ve given to our friends and family.

They need little water and do not thirst

For much but light — yours and that of the sun.

The plant has spines more hurtful than a rose,

But I’ve never been pierced by one of those.

So much life, love. You are the only one.

American Pied-Billed Dabchick (Audubon), Sonnet #379

I once wrote a child’s fairy tale

About birds that didn’t have feet.

Because they could not rest on land

They beat the wind into a gale

Which they coasted, a sleeping fleet,

Coaxing rain from the clouds they’d fanned.

The dabchick can’t fly from firm ground.

Landing on concrete he mistakes

For water, he is trapped, earth bound.

His legs drag behind like branches.

He can rise triumphant from lakes,

Rivers and ponds — when he launches

From the earth, he only stumbles.

So nature exalts and humbles.