The Musicians's Brawl (Georges de la Tour), Sonnet #354

The sad oboist with his reeds and knife
Has gone blind looking at his faithless wife.
(The orchestra has other concerns: pay,
Benefits, selling tickets, and their say
In programming the least popular works.
They think the maestro's baton a dull dirk.)
The fighting began when the mad oboe,
Hearing mockery in the ostinato,
Blamed the clarinet for his cuckoldry.
The latter squeezed lemon juice in his eyes.
Mirable dictu! The oboe could see!
He embraced his colleague with grateful cries.
The harpist, his wife, slipped into the wings,
Where her dear concertmaster plucked her strings.

The Dice Players (Georges de la Tour), Sonnet #353

When it was over we played dice by candlelight.
The musty catafalque was empty once again.
We passed the last of the altar wine out quickly,
Like warm beer -- ate the wafers with a tender bite.
When someone gave a toast to Death, we said, "Amen."
"A shame!" we said, "Quick to still, he bypassed sickly!"
We played a game of our own invention called "Gone" --
An elimination game. Each threw a bone die
Three times and survived if even one was a one.
If all three were higher numbers your turn passed by.
The last one left had to "bury" the rest with pence,
Like the old Greeks' tradition -- one for each dead eye.
To lose was to win, which to us seemed perfect sense,
And glad tribute to His Lordship's evanescence.

Medusa (Caravaggio), Sonnet #352

An old woman nodding off on the porch
Awoke when the dying moon rose, a torch
Of wan fire colder than a fractured bone
Plucked from a filthy stream. She'd been alone
For ninety years in a house full of pests
(Tucked in her lap some dessert for her guests);
Rat, spider, possum, silverfish, and snake
Crept in each night from the surrounding brake.
She combed serpents writhing out of her head
With the splayed fingers of the recent dead
Who'd come to have their way with her, young sports
Who with one look had turned to milky quartz.
A wind whispered and slipped beneath her jaw.
The crescent moon was the last thing she saw.

Narcissus in Rome (Caravaggio), Sonnet # 351

Some men are just reflections of themselves.
What the mirror shows them is all they are.
As the head moves, the unblinking eye delves
Into itself with an unthinking stare.
I knew a man bent to kiss his image,
Stopping just short, careful not to smudge
The glass or ripple the pool of oil sludge.
He saw the epitome of his Age.
When others dared to look into his glass,
He wasn't, he was -- it was hard to tell.
When they saw him, they saw themselves as well.
One day his image caught fire; flaming gas
Consumed itself and left a dull halo,
His semblance struggling to form from below.

Note: I also write about this great image in
Sonnet #450.

Girl Chopping Onions (Gerrit Dou), Sonnet #350

Moribund metaphors abound -- the slow reveal
Of the nested skin layers of the onion peel,
The dead hen who'll never precede another egg,
The beer mug emptied into some drunk's hollow leg.
My dear girl, with your empty grin and eyes dark ice,
Pardon. I've no objection as you dice and dice,
As you cut to the cool white heart of the matter,
Through insinuations and insincere chatter.
The chicken and the onions will make a fine pie,
And I, at least, will be the last to wonder why.
Beware the princeling who begs you to come play ball.
His ignorance of your state might cause your downfall.
I wish you all the grace of love in future years.
Bless you for working so hard, so hard without tears. 

A Screech Owl Being Petted (Julia Guerin), Sonnet # 349

The first eastern screech we took in was healthier,
But not enough to be released into the wild.
He'd hoot twice when I came close, as he perched
On my wife's glove, and at first I thought it was fear.
I wasn't wrong. It was the distress of a child
As if unsure he was to be scolded or birched.
My wife encouraged me to pet him. I deferred
That to her -- what could pets' pets mean to a wild bird?
Our second screech (the first found a home in a zoo)
Was badly hurt and required medicine and time.
Often he bated, broken wing flapping, and flew
Straight down to the end of the leash, then climbed,
With my wife's gentle coaxing, back onto the glove.
Petted, eyes closed, tufts up, he accepted her love.

Note: "Bated" is a term from falconry, meaning the raptor's
attempt to fly off the gauntlet or glove, in this instance when
tethered.

World Map (Hans Holbein The Younger), Sonnet #348

My mind was designed to click to the grid.

I could draw a floor plan of every home,

Each room I've lived in, etched as with acid.

The maps in my head make a heavy tome.

Some atavism shapes our love of maps --

An impulse to capture chaos in traps

Of paper and ink, odd shapes, twisting lines,

Repeat the world with approximate signs.

One old map shows an angel at each pole

Turning the earth, known by then to be round.

Monsters and sailing ships don't make a sound,

The land is mostly flat, the oceans roll,

The coordinate lines are tightly wound.

All is fixed and still as a sleeping soul.