There Stood That Lonely, Gnarled, and Deciduous Tree (Sidney Sime), Sonnet #347

It was a tortuous climb to the top,
And how I will get down the stone-strewn path
In darkness is a mystery -- the slop
Of fear I'll swallow after the bird's wrath.
Her nest is above in a nameless tree,
Quite dead but strong and stout, more rock than wood,
Whose roots broke the summit into scree.
All shrieking, beaks agape, the white crane's brood
Insists on her absence if there's no food.
She doesn't see me as she goes; returning,
She claws my face and blinds me with a wing.
Plucking a star, she sets her nest burning.
The smoke floats down on me as the birds sing.
I am locked in an egg until morning.

Woman Reading (Matisse), Sonnet #346

The tea and scones not really appealing today,
She droops in her slip, her arm on the patterned arm
Of an old chair her vanished husband left behind.
Her volume of love poems is open to Millay;
What my lips have kissed has unnecessary charm.
The words are vague, as if not written, but signed,
Silent gestures of fingers churning the air,
When what she needs are his fingers clutching her hair.
She has sat like this for days, playing the statue,
Silencing time, since the night he didn't come home,
Leaving a note of four short words, the last one "you."
She found it in the bathroom under his black comb.
She clears the table, puts the dishes in the sink,
And spends the rest of the day failing not to think.

Fishing for Souls (Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne), Sonnet #345

They came swimming in with the morning tide
After three days of storms unmoored our boats.
Somehow, they guided each hull back toward shore.
Like a school of fish two miles long and wide,
They moved as one, some submerged, some afloat,
Filling the bay with hope, a pleading corps.
We launched the boats and went fishing for souls.
Our bows bobbed clumsily through the dead shoals.
As we leaned to take their outstretched hands --
Beseeching yet so difficult to grip --
We found them quite impossible to ship,
Since each boat was already fully manned.
We saved a few but most soon went under.
A rainbow blessed the sea; then came thunder.

February Wind and Sunlight -- The Wind Harp (Charles Burchfield), Sonnet # 344

This year no snow but wind and rain
Met and ended February,
Rivers overflowing again
And again, and blinding fury.
I'd walk each time the storms ended
To show I was not offended.
The sun lit thin ice in the trees
That sang in the wind -- melodies,
High-pitched, rung like spinning tin rings;
Twigs were fret and tuner-less strings.
In March the crocus and snowdrop
Bloomed early and as quickly froze
In day on day of silent snows
That only kind April could stop.

Star Travel (Matta), Sonnet #343

The speed of light is molasses
Dripping from an overturned jar,
A slowness nothing surpasses.
Not quite the songbird stuck in lime,
We can fly, but we can't fly far,
Unless we do away with time.
I stand on a comet of stone,
The tri-star Alpha Centauri
Irradiating, blinding me.
I'm here because I am alone
In no known age or century,
(Yet no metaphysical zone),
Where all is either late or soon.
I leave to catch a passing moon.

On the seashore there are two visiting apples (Rene Magritte), Sonnet #342

Too late, the tree stump silences the ax
Under a root stepping down like a foot,
To render the blade motionless and moot.
Are the visiting apples ripe, you ask?
One wears a green, his bride a purple mask.
Are they real fruit or molded of old wax?
They totter on the sand inching nearer,
A mute duo smiling and curious,
Not quite what we see, perhaps spurious --
Nothing on the beach is any queerer.
Yes, a cupboard tree holds a waiting bell
And a new dollhouse with a bright red roof --
Articles no apple would buy or sell,
Only mourn, and doing so vanish -- poof!

Zone of Avoidance*, Sonnet #341

That is where the seventh dimension sleeps,
Tucked like a few mice in a cardboard tube.
The density of the galaxy seeps
What's beyond its mass, but no amplitude
Of star or nova can penetrate there
To reach my retina. Oh, but we care!
It's maddening, this secret extension
Of nothing we know and will never guess,
Like a rule the gods forgot to mention
That demands of us a No and a Yes.
A pretty phrase, the zone of avoidance,
As if we've chosen not to be bothered,
Decided that child will not be fathered,
When we'd rather ignore our ignorance.

*Note: The "zone of avoidance" is the area
of the sky that is obscured by the densest
portions of the Milky Way.