Waterbirds Nesting (Josephine Joy), Sonnet #580

 

The great egret nests in a colony,

In woods not far from a river or pond.

They build thin platforms of sticks, twigs and reeds,

With a distant view like a balcony.

Not many fowl embrace this kind of bond,

Though crows return each night to rookeries.

The egret stands in water still as stone

For hours waiting for a fish or frog

They eat wriggling with a rapier bill.

Patience is the most precious skill they own.

A black mink will leap from behind a log,

Attack, cracking its legs enough to kill.

It’s then like ripping apart a child’s kite —

Broken sticks, torn paper red-spattered white.

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Altarpiece No. 1 (Hilma af Klint), Sonnet #579

 

Here is a painting of our mind,

A congeries of colored shapes.

Balls of twisted twine unwind.

What rises into reach escapes.

A thought is not of any kind

To the overly sighted blind.

Atop the altar of the brain,

A holiness we can’t sustain

Explodes and falls like acid rain,

Leaving neither symbol nor stain.

The pyramid and the circle

Rise from a baseless miracle,

The infant’s incoherent cries

At what enters unprepared eyes.

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Dandelion with a Death’s Head Moth (Margaretha Barbara Dietzsch), Sonnet #578

1

More beautiful dying alive,

(As it fades, generating seeds),

Than in its full yellow flower,

The dandelions in my yard thrive,

Though people denounce them as weeds.

White tuft atop a thin tower,

A brain tottering on a spine,

Its thoughts fly in windblown showers,

Infinitesimally fine,

Like disintegration of hours.

2

Some moths carry a second head

On their backs — fooling — they’re not dead.

Oh, how we love inspired dread,

When our own lives are extended.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase at Amazon. Click here:

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Couplet

 The moon glides on its blade of light

And leaves not a scratch on the night.

The Black Flag (Rene Magritte), Sonnet #577

 

Multiple shelves of sky

Hold old bric a brac,

Thunderclouds I can’t track

Or meteors descry.

Nothing seems to keep up,

Yet fills me like a cup.

I dance from shelf to shelf

Unburdening my self,

Turning war-bent airships

To innocuous pips

Soon to wing, flag, and drop,

To fill the raptor’s crop.

My dance is never done,

Shelf to shelf to the sun.

Free Curve to the Point - Accompanying Sound of Geometric Curves (Vasily Kandinsky), Sonnet #576

 

Now? Everything points to the now point.

There are no revelations in the joint

But what the curvatures of time anoint

Like ten fingers playing here’s the steeple

When inside there are no little people.

It is a lovely world after all,

When simple, not straight, no awkward bending

Of air, just the eagles’ mad descending,

And the cringing voles’ mute, terrified ball.

Then? A word for time with twined intention —

Then I was and what will I be by then?

Two words (not three) for all of duration

Lead us through the revolutions of arc,

Freely to the point of the question mark.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase at Amazon. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Canal by the Moonlight (Koho Shoda), Sonnet #575

 

We walk along the canal at moonrise.

I ask you, “Is the moon stupid or wise?”

“Ask the moon,” you tell me. The moon replies,

“Ask a lightbulb or the sun. My light lies.”

We wonder how bright it is on Saturn

When here each summer the forests burn.

For now, the evening is cool and dry,

The canal, silent, still, reflects the sky,

The nighthawks don’t know how to whir or fly,

And nowhere is there written the word “why.”

It’s said time is what happens when nothing

Else does, but I think all’s a spinning ring,

Invisible sound, a silent seeing,

A tiny moon dangling on nervous string.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase at Amazon. Click here:

My Human Disguise.