Bald Eagle (Audubon), Sonnet #263

They glide more than most birds, wings straight
As a sea plane's, never drunkenly tipping
Like the turkey vulture or flapping desperately
Like the crow. So rarely seen, they're like fate
Surprising you with its ineluctable black wing,
Or a revelation revealed parenthetically,
Two down strokes that lift you on the air
Into the unknowable, naturally aware.
Fishing, they've been known to grasp prey
To big too lift, and, too hungry to let go,
They drown in thrashed-up, freezing spray,
Their head and tail feathers ice and snow.
I have seen his eye up close, though caged.
He looked at me illimitably enraged.

Last Hike (Shitao), Sonnet # 262

If there is anything, there's no last hike.
Standing above the clouds with my old friend,
We contemplate the imminent end
Of sunlight and the scolding of the shrike,
Guarding his bugs impaled in the bramble.
The mists roil, mass, thin, darken, briefly part,
Revealing mist. Up and back, we amble
Along the precipice. It's time to start
Back, though it's harder to relinquish time
Stepping down than to find it as you climb.
So, we find we have been frozen, like rock,
Our marbled eyes fixed on the blinding glare
Of saturated and sun-glazed air --
In there, the dripping of a water clock.

Irina Beatrix (photo by Michael Antman), Sonnet #261

Close your eyes and dream, dear Beatrix, dream.
The sundial at your wrist moves with the sun
And the stranger you meet each day, unseen
In the shadows, is yours, the only one:
He carries an ageless, cumbersome book,
In which he draws and draws your perfect face.
A face you've never recognized, he took
From you, idolizing the female race.
The scarlet dove drops a poppy into your lap --
You slip deeply into your alter consciousness.
A beautiful young woman closes her eyes too,
Centuries from now, and wakens you from your nap.
The death of your child is no longer meaningless.
Yes, you'll pass too -- into a woman who is you.


Note: The painting is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix.

Pileated Woodpecker (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #260

Complacencies of the dead tree,
Every inch of bark hiding ants.
In bare patches a filigree
Of rectangular holes. He rants
And drums, but always at a distance --
The hardest god damn bird to see.
I followed him once by a stream.
I could not get close until I
Stepped into the water, thigh high.
To him I ceased to seem to seem.
Above, he ripped a branch apart,
Hungry savagery, like art
From a chisel, mallet, and drill.
For hours, I watched him kill, eat, kill.

composition-z-viii (László Moholy-Nagy), Sonnet #259

The colors muted, sere, the shapes impinge
On form. Combinations evaporate
Dimension and perspectives derange
The eye. We can't exist in such a state.
I wish I had a ball that bounced higher
Than the point whence my fingers let it drop,
That not even gravity would dare stop.
We know the universe is a liar.
(Science is like the blind man who can take
Out his eye and polish it with a cloth.
He lays it down and someone puts a fake
In its place -- the eye of a cabbage moth.)
Nature abhors perfect circles or lines,
Leaving us to pervert its perfect signs.

Eagle (Kishi Ganku), Sonnet #258

The feathers only frame the human eye,
A master's eye, an enlightened being
Who sees the flea struggling in the sand,
Who has forgotten to forget the I,
Who sees the present in all that's fleeting,
Who wields a heavy and powerless wand.
I suspect enlightenment, when men "see,"
Is nothing much, a mere epiphany,
A moment of insight, most certainly,
But not quite a glimpse of eternity.
A piercing human eye, an eagle's soul?
The teachings of Jesus, Buddha, et al,
All come down to this. You're free. It's your call.
Do good, love all men, don't be an asshole.

Two Water Sonnets, Nos. 256 and 257

Seascape (Sargent), Sonnet #257

The former troop transport sails west,
Back to the Philippine Islands,
Now with a family of nine.
I clutch at the rail as each crest
Breaks and falls. I struggle to stand,
Looking at the horizon line.
I am six. The sea a billion.
Both of us younger than the sun.
Flying fish and porpoises leap,
As if to lead us past the deep.
The Deep, from which the waves, dark, wild,
And cold, grasping, thrust up, and flail
Like the hands of a drowning child --
And through them ships serenely sail.

The Cascade of Mingxianquan at Mt. Hutouyan (Shitao), Sonnet #256

Like arrows shattering when they strike stone,
The rivulets off Mt Hutouvan mist.
Shredded by the air, they cease to exist,
Voicing their fall in a moaned monotone.
Each trace has drifted over time, leaving
Long scars (now covered by lichen and moss),
The whole like portions of the human brain.
Now beyond the stone, the waters, weaving
In an updraft, are perpetual loss
Restored above by perpetual rain.
We stand enshrouded in moist air, blinking
And cold by a pool beneath the cascade,
Watching each other as we slowly fade,
Ideas worn thin by too much thinking.