Avenue at Arles (Van Gogh), Sonnet #483

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My Human Disguise.

For Ruth

When the ground rises up to steal

The autumn leaves and the maples

Grow taller as they become bare,

The cloud-entrapped sun becomes still —

Its new diminished light dapples

The hustling squirrel’s leaf-red fur. 

Chestnuts and buckeyes pack twig nests.

The burrowing chipmunk resists

The inner call to sleep so strong

He must chase his siblings or sing.

I too change, cooling with the air,

My heart walking on hands as far

As the end of the avenue

Where I turn and return to you.

Fog Run (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #482

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My Human Disguise.

The mother runs away from her daughter

And doesn’t stop until she reaches home.

She was afraid that if her child caught her

In the evening fog they both would roam,

Blind and lost, perhaps into the forest,

Or off the sand cliffs above the river.

No, getting baby home quickly was best.

The old pine door opens with a shiver.

The child runs in and hides behind the couch,

Where she finds her in a resentful crouch.

In the morning, mists run like sentences

In the yard and illustrate the windows.

The daughter stands on the front porch and knows,

What she couldn’t last night, what fog senses.

Sanskrit Character—Fudo, The Demon Queller (Hakuin), Sonnet #481

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My Human Disguise.

The character knew he could not kill

But only quell the demon within,

Only drive his foot into its throat

And not let up even when it grew still,

As he knew that was its rictus of sin

(Less potent when, silenced, no gloat

Assailed the air like a black-winged kite,

Its head and eyes deceptively white

Circling harvested fields, hunting soul),

His leg beyond strength, aging to stone,

A numbness, cold as unfired coal,

The marrow seeping from his ankle bone,

He thinks he could surrender and free

The evil that, laughing, wouldn’t flee.

Crows (Edo Period, Japan), Sonnet #480

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My Human Disguise.

My daughter says crows have a special caw

When they want others to come out and play.

She says they are nothing but beak and claw

Stuck to flapping smudges like to black clay.

Tonight they are a thousand cries, raucous

And shrill like legislative caucuses.

When the sun is gone, the crows, like all birds,

Will vanish and become silent as words

Pressed between the pages of a closed book,

As present as a European rook.

They huddle all night in their rookery

And at dawn explode in all directions

To escape each other, make mockery

Of murder. There’ll be no real defections.

Procession of the Autumn Insects (Matsumura Keibun), Sonnet #479

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My Human Disguise.

The crickets sing ceaselessly every night.

Are they warning off or chirping the dark?

They’ve a neutral effect, like a chalk mark

On an old slate blackboard, more gray than white.

I walk out into the back yard. Silence.

A crescent moon slides behind a thick cloud.

I shout “yes!” once and shatter night’s nonsense.

When I go in the crickets’ answer, both loud

And incessant, scolds me for my pretense.

I realize they are not scared, but proud.

In autumn, some crickets sound all day long,

As they regale the sun in regal state.

In moonlight, they whisper, winter can wait.

Soon the first frost will extinguish their song.

Print Gallery (M. C. Escher), Sonnet #478

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My Human Disguise.

To look through windows, that’s my task —

Through pupils, then my eyeglasses,

Then all framed images, unmasked

By fixed or widened apertures

(Bound as eyes are by eyelashes),

But what I see (I’m not quite sure)

Always changes all the same.

Too much is hidden by the frames.

I take what’s there and make sonnets,

An old form, adequate, fishnets

For ideas the images hook,

My own kind of print gallery.

I ask you not to read, but see

What I have written. Then, please, look.

Stone Henge (Thomas Hearne), Sonnet #477

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My Human Disguise.






What confronts us always hurts us,

Duration that doesn’t endure —

An articulate susurrus

In language absolutely pure

Of meaning, yet the understood

Plucking of a stringless oud.

These settling stones are no older

Than my standing here among them,

Though I will sooner grow colder —

The builders having meant “amen.”

I said “hurt” — I don’t know what kind.

The muscles clench and doubts impinge

On leanings and knowns of the mind.

It’s not a stone but a time henge.