Howling Dog (Paul Klee), Sonnet #437

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My Human Disguise.









It’s a dog howling at a moose,

Said her daughter, or at the moon.

To her it was a mind set loose.

It will be time to go home soon,

She said, and took the child’s hand.

Let me stay for one more minute.

She simply did not understand.

There is nothing of art in it,

Just some color daubs and scribbling,

A little malicious ribbing

Meant to make me look like a fool.

Her daughter said, It’s beautiful!

If you think so dear, you’re the boss.

She felt the slightest sense of loss.

Trojan Horse (Pompeii Fresco), Sonnet #436

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My Human Disguise.







Why did the ancient deities foul things so much?

They’re like the bully who kicks a crippled child’s crutch,

Then helps him up only to knock him down again,

And so the war dragged on for not one year, but ten.

Because of gods, we can’t know what really happened.

Did an arrow in a heel really spur Troy’s end?

Could one adulteress’s Aphroditic beauty

Destroy a nation’s sense of honor and duty?

The wooden horse was a tribute to Athena,

That two headed she-serpent, that amphisbaena,

Whose fangs struck brave men down each day, score upon score,

Who loved neither enemy much, only the war.

Now no one interferes with man’s love of bloodshed.

We’re on our own. Athena, Aphrodite? Dead.

January (Grant Wood), Sonnet #435

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My Human Disguise.

The storm over, the rabbit’s tracks

Leave ghost faces in sifted snow.

The moon is neither old nor new,

Though enough to light the hayricks.

All white-capped, they lean, row on row,

Bowing at time’s ceremony 

In welcome of the end of now —

The beginning of memory —

Like old men who left October

To youths and welcomed December.

Oh,Tomorrow! Don’t come too soon!

The night has so much dark to live

Before it’s savaged by the sun,

That jealous spoiler high above. 

Boar Hound (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #434

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My Human Disguise.

No one knows the golden boar hound's mother,

If she’s boar or hound, or mythic Other.

He was found scratching at our farmhouse door

And though quick to accept a wooden cage,

Was soon released, being more hound than boar,

Nothing to fear, with his eyes of great age.

His eight fleecy legs (some seemed more like arms)

Caused him to stumble and sometimes crawl,

A monster, yes, though not without his charms.

His tusks could draw images, like an awl,

Scrapping planks or smooth stone, which he would hide

(Though we could always find them when we tried)

About the farm — scenes from the past, our past.

The day he left we feared would be our last.

Chrysanthemum (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #433

For Ruth

The flower has a purpose beyond beauty,

A regenerative function we don’t see.

Its power, in being, is touched, and gives,

And by this mutual exchange, it lives.

Its perfect kind grows on just to be seen.

Its petals glow, even at dusk, a sheen

That’s inner lit, only darkness can dim.

In sunlight it fills the eye to the brim.

My love, the chrysanthemum is you,

As columbines and tiger lilies are too.

Every summer our garden expands,

Pouring, into the cupping of our hands,

Perfumes, petals, color and energy,

Filling a single life with you and me.

Posted on our 41st wedding anniversary.

Rocky Mountain Goats (Albert Bierstadt), Sonnet #432

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My Human Disguise.

I climbed a 50 foot stage house ladder.

It went straight up, made of bolted steel bar.

Halfway up I couldn't have gone madder.

My hands turned to sweat as I saw how far

I would fall. I was certain I had dreamed

Last night of this moment, how I had seemed,

Like now, unable to move. My hands slipped.

I threw one arm over and hugged a rung

And for more than a lifetime there I hung.

Somehow I got down, my sanity gripped.

Thus, the fact of a goat’s sure-footed hooves

On the steepest mountainside seems unreal.

Is it all a matter of reach and feel?

Or is it only the goat’s mind that moves?

Autumn (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), Sonnet #431

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My Human Disguise.

Almost past its prime, my fruit falls, bruises,

Before the harvest has even begun.

Pears and peaches are picked up in the end —

Even though they rot, they’ve other uses.

The burning bush, ignited by the sun —

The apple trees, whose burdened branches bend

Almost to the grass — are both flaming red.

They’ll soon be stripped of life — barren, not dead.

My grapes tumble into the wine presses,

Where pulp turns to juice from urgent stresses.

The Argiope spider in his web still

Hungers, before hard frost, for a last kill.

My summer mate gone, I am gourd and leaf,

Nothing more. Winter will bring cold relief.

Battle of Actium (Laureys a Castro), Sonnet #430

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My Human Disguise.

The besotted hero allows his love’s presence

At war on sea against the advice of his men,

As though afraid he might never see her again,

Though Cleopatra demanded her attendance.

The engagement lost, her man rumored dead, she flew

From the smoke-obscured scene, not aware that she drew

Anthony after her, leaving his men to drown.

For love of her he lost his honor and his crown.

I believe in “honor,” though not a common word,

As it once was — a life that honors all others.

My definition, at least. Some think me absurd.

And love? It can’t be defined except by lovers.

I do not judge them, overcome by love (not lust).

I honor them whose love and honor’s all but dust.

Wind Storm on Lake Michigan 10/12/18, Sonnet #429

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My Human Disguise.









The waters are the solution of time,

(I’m not the only being to have said),

Forever stirred in its lake or sea bed

By wind or current; in its essence, prime,

Like 2, 3, 5, 7, or 11,

Or in some quantity, 97.

After all these many eons, “years,”

The solution is not nearly resolved—

Duration hasn’t thoroughly evolved

To nothing. Let us be content with tears.

Today, gale winds beat the waves to a moil

That tore the sand from the beach, turning

The water brown as the next wave’s recoil

Threw back the sand into the hour’s churning.

Fall of Rebel Angels, detail (Pieter Bruegel The Elder), Sonnet #428

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My Human Disguise.

Did each cease to be an angel

The moment he or she rebelled?

What creatures were they when they fell,

Who spewed and farted, bled and yelled?

A kind of dead, not devils yet,

Before the rest of time in Hell,

They must endure a monster’s spell

In payment of their Master’s debt.

So men today learn to betray

Themselves and all they ever knew

As truth. They haven’t lost their way,

They’ll say. “We’re just making things new.”

The air is full of monsters’ lies

Falling like newly wingless flies.

Pikes Peak (Albert Bierstadt), Sonnet #427

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My Human Disguise.

I lived on Custer, a white hood

Filling my living room window.

On a June afternoon I stood

On the summit in blooms of snow,

An hour later in sun below.

The peak was seldom where you were

And never where you were not sure

A great presence of white and pink,

As if by thinking, made you think.

The Utes called it “Tava” or sun,

As if there must be more than one,

Needing light close enough to touch,

To take away, but not too much,

Or soon the mountain would be gone.

The Actor (Picasso), Sonnet #426

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My Human Disguise.

As I am “else,” I am more than I am.

I really only speak thus to myself.

My voice is always sweetly orotund,

But what I’m here to say is all mere sham.

I’ve earned a moiety of fame and pelf

And not once have I given a refund.

My fingers flick about like ten small swords,

No sharper then the edges of my words.

My visage contortions are a mirror

(That’s where I learned them) of your hapless souls;

Mine is a mimesis of your terror

As you nose up squinting from your mole holes.

Ah, sirrah, let’s be friends. I’m just joking!

This playwright coughs words as though he’s choking.

Nearly Hit (Paul Klee), Sonnet #425

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My Human Disguise.

















My brain is a stairway to the arrow,

The one and ineluctable pointer

That flies true as any truth can and strikes

Like the rusted tine of an old harrow.

The arrow’s in an attic I enter

With telescope eyes seeking, like a shrike’s,

What I left here for later long ago.

The progress of the unfletched shaft is slow,

Has yet to pierce the humor of my eye.

Seen darkly, dust-mote-shaded, almost shy,

It moves, like Zeno, only half-way here,

Then half more, hardly trying to arrive.

It’s time I see I have nothing to fear.

It cannot pierce me while I’m still alive.

Marine Fauna (Pompeii Mosaic), Sonnet #424

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My Human Disguise.













When you look into their eye — shrimp or squid,

Octopus, lobster, bass, flounder or eel,

You’ll find no volition except blind id,

A shiny button or a spokeless wheel.

I wonder if the artist pleased the man

Who paid for this mosaic for his house.

The sea discreetly hides the inhuman

The mosaicist serves up like lobscouse.

His art form one of endless accretion,

And his subjects being quick and many,

Did he work from a diver’s memory,

Or pose his dead models till completion,

Not seeing the fauna’s slow corruption

Preserved by a volcano’s eruption?

Tree Cricket and Firefly (Kitagawa Utamaro), Sonnet #423

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My Human Disguise.








When we were kids we used to smear fireflies

With old badminton or tennis rackets,

Unconscious that something more than light dies

Each time. Tonight they seem like opened eyes.

It’s August — there are three sounds from crickets

In my grasses, bushes, oaks, and thickets.

The tree cricket is loudest and solo,

His scraping hesitant and slow and low.

An upper range of choristers sing

With uninterrupted rising ringing.

In the grass, dozens, like an Indian drone,

Emit a mid-pitched and unvarying tone.

In other towns I’ve heard the same tone poem

And thought, crickets are everywhere — their home.