Snow at Louveciennes (Alfred Sisley), Sonnet #498

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My Human Disguise.

When the snow first falls it perfumes

The air; the myriad features

Of our world are made sweet and new.

Growing deep, flake on flake costumes

All but living moving creatures.

When shadowed, it blushes gray blue.

On warming days the snow falls first

From slanted roofs and tree branches.

Foot-thick boluses slide and burst

In childish avalanches.

The snowmen in every yard

Will droop in sun, at night freeze hard.

Before melting, snow turns dingy

And sad. All beauty is stingy.

The Gray Tree (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #497

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My Human Disguise.









The ice storm lasted for 36 hours

And coated each tree limb an inch thick.

Workers couldn’t climb collapsing towers

And three hundred thousand clocks ceased to tick.

The trees crumpled beneath the weight and ripped

The power lines from transformers and poles.

Each overloaded circuit breaker tripped.

Without heat we hid in our beds like moles.

Two days later the sun melted the glaze.

Our yards and streets turned pool and rivulet.

The next day a warm wind and hotter blaze

Blew everything dry before the sun set.

The lights came on and normalcy returned.

That spring a million limbs were trimmed and burned.

Noyo Headlands Park (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #496

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

No complacencies of the sketch book.

My daughter stands at the overlook

Seeing. Should she first paint the white crests

Or the rocks? The water that never rests?

What ever rests? The seagull will come last.

She is cautious, paints well but not too fast.

She knows even violence must come slow,

It’s beauty a trompe l’oeil shadow show.

She’s always felt this power, like the sea’s,

To unerase with feathered strokes and seize

The form and feeling that are always there

Though they are as invisible as air.

She regrets only the distant whale spout,

So indistinct she’ll have to leave it out.

Title Unknown (Yves Tanguy), Sonnet #495

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

I crawl beneath a cart that’s bearing trees

As thin as matchsticks and wait for love.

I feel not the slightest hesitant breeze

Nor do the sickly branches quiver above.

The cart has no handles that I can grasp,

Which leaves salvation to patient motion

With no guarantees, like the last gasp

Of the flounder stranded on the ocean

Beach waiting for a friendly stretching wave,

One in a thousand, if he’s to be saved.

I can wait beneath the cart for so long

Before risking rolling beneath its wheels.

I am agile enough, but not too strong,

And love, as I have learned, fears how death feels

Fanciful Ink Drawing II (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #494

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

Top-hatted crows fly single file to roost,

Run the town like magicians, all for show.

The snake-tailed cat and Mr. Legnose, loosed

Like all the other inmates, love to crow.

Ostrich-legged, necky racers set the pace

While tittering dancing ghosts dance in place.

But the man-mouthing Eggman’s won the race.

The castle’s prisoners wail from the roof

That they were arrested with too much proof.

A constrictor hangs, his neck in a knot,

From a decayed tree where men made of sticks

Perform unbelievable gymnastics.
The Ringmaster chides his caterpillar,
Though the Boss is a yapping black terrier.

Knot Eye Tiger (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #493

The Japanese artist reduces the word

To the image, not unlike a cartoon

In its simplicity and lack of depth,

To find the inessence of the absurd,

The quintessence of the present rune.

Such images never drew in a breath,

But they look at us with knotted eyes

Drawing tight the ends of close and soon,

All to answer our what’s? with why’s?

This is our one tiger, the tigers croon.

You are only yourselves in our disguise,

Only knowing us without being wise.

The tiger has disappeared into the page

To reappear in the next human age.

State Street Bridge, Sonnet #492

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









The fourth son sat in the middle

Of the back seat as his father

Drove them around their new home town.

For being twelve, he was little,

Wore a brace of steel and leather.

His Mom told him to settle down

When he complained he was hungry.

The streets were unplowed slush and ice.

The river hadn’t frozen twice.

His parents always seemed angry.

He’d remember this wandering drive,

How no one laughed or even spoke

(As if their new home held no hope),

Snowblind to renewing life.