The Sheltered Path (Claude Monet), Sonnet #538

The old man plods toward senescence

On the sheltered path of his thought.

He thinks only what he can sense,

Senses only what he's been taught.

The trees on the path were planted

Decades ago as a windbreak.

Their trunks have been slightly canted

By dumb and insistent breezes.

Always more asleep than awake,

He follows that path, coughs, wheezes,

And nothing much occurs to him

He hasn’t sensed a thousand times.

Revelation would be a whim

Of these trees, these rustling chimes.

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Carpet of Memory 2 (Paul Klee), Sonnet #537

“Flying carpet” might be more apt,

Fleeing, unreachable, rapt.

Not magical, but uncanny,

Not even real, epiphany

Without a point because it is

Not up to analysis.

We’re given only a number —

How many can’t be counted, known —

(Fraying threads, fabric unsewn).

“I’m certain that I remember,”

I say. The carpet flaps. I fall.

Can I recall one thing at all?

The memories that I most fear

Are those I hope to lose next year.

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Fog Run II (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #536

As if we’ve wandered into dark chances,

A fog descends through thick forest branches

With the silent drop of a heavy drape.

Our first intuition is for escape.

The fog uncenters us, spreading us thin —

Once guiltless we feel we might deserve sin,

That the fog is a judgement for not being —

Not feeling, not hearing, and not seeing —

Not as we might and now we know we must.

It’s not too late! The fog is life, not dust. 

Look back! Don’t let the other fall behind,

Or you both might become equally lost.

There could be nothing where the sun once shined,

But only now. Soon you’ll know heat or frost.

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Myna Bird in Pine Tree (Mu Ch’i), Sonnet #535

 

It’s said you have to split its tongue

When the myna is very young

Before you can teach it to speak.

At first it wags its yellow beak

While emitting a stifled squeak.

The patient teacher says one word,

And then to unconfuse the bird,

Repeats it many times, mimics

Himself, until the bird’s mind clicks

And its forked tongue repeats the word.

It can learn any human sound

As long as it's kept in its cage.

It dies if released from that cage

Into worlds of confusing sound.

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The Sleeping Gypsy (Henri Rousseau), Sonnet #534

 

Each night the old gypsy

Gets a little tipsy.

He falls asleep and dreams

Of all that more than seems.

Beside him lays his oud,

Vibrating strings and wood,

His bottle of red wine — 

Essence of the Divine.

He tightly grips his cane

To bash away the rain,

Or bat the falling star,

Erasing its bright scar.

A lion, maybe real,

Could make of him a meal.

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Gilles, or Pierrot (Jean-Antoine Watteau), Sonnet #533

  

Some of us never get past our stage fright.

I forget my lines, stand stiff and dumb,

Unable even to exit, stage right.

My ears roar with white noise, my tongue goes numb.

The sight of clustered eyes — the audience

With its expectations, its curt demands,

Its taut, arms-crossed, unforgiving silence —

Fills my head with endless ampersands.

Each remembered line is followed by “&.”

& then? & then? & like an hourglass,

I become empty of yet-to-fall sand —

& then come the billows of laughing gas,

Off stage, the director’s disgusted look,

A finger across his throat, then the hook.

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Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) (Van Gogh), Sonnet #532

 

Without it we can’t live in the moment.

Without its slowly grown paler shadows,

Without its insistence, its distractions,

Without its being what no one else knows,

Now would be indecipherable scent,

Bodies statuary of fixed actions,

A path a path no walker ever crossed,

A mother’s love forever nascent,

Immediacy soon forever lost.

The dead past animates the dead present.

Old women walk among the dianthus

As a young gardener with shears deadheads.

All apply a modest calculus

Of then and now among the flowerbeds.

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

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