The Black Tree, Sonnet #247

I saw the black tree from a gravel road.
I could not help stopping to stare.
I saw clearly, believed it was not there.
It hid, a mystery, all code.
Were its branches burned, kindled by lightning,
Or blighted by some insect borer,
Choked of light by foliage tightening,
Or stripped bare by some unknown horror?
I opened the window hoping to hear
Loud birdsong, joyous, unconcerned.
The silence fumed like gases slowly burned.
How could a dead tree evoke fear?
I took this photo, quickly drove away.
I will climb down from it someday.

Sundial (Escher), Sonnet #246

The motionless gnomon slowly persists,
Pointing the hour in pinching the sun's rays,
While hands of a clock clench their tiny fists,
And sheets of squared paper reckon the days.
A clock can't tick in space, though comets pass,
Light doesn't exist until it falls upon
A planet, your eyes, or a cloud of gas.
Thus, a love is engendered by the sun.
Ruth, our days number some 15,000,
And more than 400,000 the hours.
Let's not waste a moment counting the sand.
What's left us is unknowable, but ours.
I will stand still, watch you encircle me --
No shadows, just the light of your beauty.

A Roller, Two Peregrine Falcons and a Long-Eared Owl with her Young (Francis Barlow), Sonnet #245

The peregrines' talons have eased up on their branch.
They're freely balanced, committed, ready to launch.
The plump roller, caught in its amatory dive,
Could be dragged to earth, ripped up while still half alive.
One eyes a clutch of three barred owlets; yes, kindred,
And guarded by their mother, but dozing, well-fed.
An owl must eat a mouse every day without fail
(As I must). The eagle wolfs fish, coughs up the scales.
A mouse pees, as it goes, to leave a trail back home.
A kestrel reads the yellow line like a poem,
Knowing at the beginning or end he will find
The answer to the deepest question of his kind.
The peregrine abandons the owlets to rise
And at 200 miles an hour crashes what flies.

Bodhidharma (Hakuin), Sonnet #244

For Lucien Stryk

His eyes tell us he grasps nothing he sees.

Nothing like shock, wonder, or puzzlement
(His purpose, to see only by degrees),
His response is a dog's to a new scent.
The more he's enlightened, the more dour,
Saddened by the presumption of a flower,
Disillusioned by the barred owl's power --
Endless patience where the field mice cower.
As he stared into a cave for nine years,
Did he presume to think he saw it all,
What is, what isn't, on a granite wall,
That makes a mockery of monks and seers?
Here he's a presence more paper than ink,
All marrow, nothing more, no sense, no think.

Lucien Stryk was one of my writing teachers
at Northern Illinois University. A fine teacher
and poet, he was very influential in
bringing Zen poetry to the United States 
through his translations and interviews. He
was a good friend and mentor.

Inner Courtyard, Strandgade 30 (Vilhelm Hammershoi), Sonnet #243

I assume these windows look on others,
But not the one I'm looking through at them.
The pupil, an irradiated gem,
Reflects upon each pane and its brothers.
A hundred years old, once a glazier's pride,
The lights have been etched by wind, dust, and rain,
By the hard scrubbing at faint time's stain,
And the gaze of hundreds who've long since died.
One window, open, catches the late sun.
As if in lonely rebellion, it flares,
Illuminating a room: no one's there.
Nothing moves. There is nothing to be done.
I close the window with a single thought.
What we see through is never what we've sought.

St. Michael Weighing Souls (Kartner Meister), Sonnet #242

No soul weighs more than the flesh it impounds.
It grows with time, then begins to vanish,
Looks less like a soldier than how one sounds,
Marching off. God of beginnings, Ganesh,
Blasts his trumpet at the birth of the child,
As Michael weighs its soul for the first time.
The devil scoffs, his self-righteousness riled,
Skulks nearby, shields his eyes from the sublime.
The child, perfectly weightless, is handed
To Buddha, and with one hand slap, branded.
Eighty years on, he again stands naked
In the balance, whispers a list of seers,
Of those who loved his soul for its own sake,
Then, like devils long ago, disappears.

With The Eagle (Klee), Sonnet #241

He can be only the smallest part of our lives.
Over the years I've watched him not even a day.
In spring, circling a pond near leafless woods, he dives
And, skimming the water, dips his talons -- his prey,
A small bass. He lands on a dead tree and devours
All in seconds. Motionless, he'll rest there for hours.
When the trees leaf out he is much harder to see.
A nest, big as a pram, disappears, and his mate,
Whom he uxoriously trades nesting duty,
Will fly off to hunt for herself what he just ate.
The eagle sees me more clearly than I see him.
He doesn't care for me, so I remain a dim
Apparition he never completely ignores,
From caution, a mystery he never explores.