Great Horned Owl (Audubon), Sonnet #277

You were envious when two friends and I
Surprised one in woods just a mile from home.
He lit on a branch; his tufts against sky
At dusk were proof and reason for this poem.
As stirring as it was to see the bird
In the wild, my only thought was of you,
That you weren't there with me to see it too.
Well, my love, not the first time that the word
Has to substitute for experience.
You've been captured by the magnificence
Of great fierce eyes and the raptor's plight.
And when they're injured, rescued and healed
(I've shared your joy returning them to flight!)
By your caring, your lovely heart's revealed.

Clouds in Late Fall, Sonnet #276

I have never seen anything in clouds
But a mirror of my unruly mind.
Up there, my interior is being signed
By the gestures of blind and deaf-mute crowds.
There is nothing I do not recognize,
Yet can't name, or vaguely realize,
Because the mind is only a disguise.
I'm not a thought or feeling. I am eyes.
So why did I choose these raked clouds, the skies
Beyond visible, irises blind and blue?
Where I stood the too-close cars rushed past.
The camera trembled, a cold wind blew.
I couldn't find what I'd stopped for -- the view
Had changed -- so I took what was left and last.

Hunters in the Snow (Bruegel), Sonnet #275

I waited in the car for my mother,
And said the words crystal spark moonbeam.
The deep snow, banked to the boughs of the pines
By the church, wasn't mine, but another's.
I could only take with me what might seem
Mine, the words I would one day write, these lines.
The night sky shined and the snow ignited,
A new snow, untouched by shovel or tracks.
Was I meant to wonder, be delighted?
Was such beauty a deliberate act?
I was four -- the image never left me,
And not once since has snow-light seemed the same.
The hunters return, leather sacks empty.
Tonight, in high-banked fires, they'll taste game.

Oak in Snow Shower, Sonnet #274

The oak won't grow straight or narrow.
Its parsing of three dimensions
Is like an exploded arrow
Or skeins of galaxial suns.
Time is the drifting down of snow.
Some men cut down a dead willow.
For the first time I can now see
The oak out of my front window.
It beckons to the breath in me.
I once compared bare trees to screams.
A stupid metaphor. "Spacetime,"
Too, renames what is with what seems.
Look closely. The oak's branches rhyme
With all we are, as we sublime.

Pileated Woodpecker in Flight (David Mintz, photographer), Sonnet #273

They say his lost cousin, ivory-billed,
Once chopped down a sycamore and when locked
In a cabin with a bobcat, he killed
The beast with a stab, flinging splinters, knocked
A hole in the door and flew. Man, he mocked.
I don't believe his laughter is extinct.
The pileated's eternal drumming
Is always distant, like tiny thunder.
He's flown right over me. I flinched. I blinked.
His loping flight, black and white wings strumming
The forest light, is the end of wonder.
Here he's caught, head turned around and under,
Flying, crest upside down -- impossible.
Yet, a thing of feathers, flesh, blood, and bill.

Couple Walking in the Forest (Van Gogh), Sonnet #272

For Ruth

We call them our "woods walks," as though the trees

Walk with us; one follows, one leads -- each sees

Us, seldom hand in hand because the light,

Leaf-filtered, tinted, already binds us,

And should we ever become lost, finds us.

We're tall oaks branching each other's delight.

You say you always find here perfect calm.

I feel it too, my love, I feel through you.

In a leaf, I see tracings of your palm,

Read our future, not real, perhaps, but true.

Sometimes you walk ahead and look for birds,

The screech owl (unicorn!) in its knothole,

Never yet seen, though you search every bole,

Your face a lovely sonnet without words.

Posted on our 38th wedding anniversary.

Orchestra of the Opera (Degas), Sonnet #271

Half a life spent practicing the cello,
He's performed for less than a year before
An audience, may yet earn his fellow
Players' respect -- never the conductor's.
The little dancer with the pretty knees
Ignores him when curtain calls are over,
But later will do all she can to please.
(Many in the pit have been her lovers.)
That's him, looking up from his music stand,
Giving you, in the audience, the eye.
"Enjoy," it seems to say, "as if you can.
For me, this music is to live or die,
Sounds that cannot speak, yet signify,
And nothing you will ever understand."