Storm (Sesson Shukei), Sonnet #501

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My Human Disguise.

The mighty sea is slave to storms

And fishing boats slaves to the sea

As men are enslaved by all three.

The deck, stout mast, and taut sail form

The only threat to fend off death.

The sea drowns beneath the typhoon,

What men call an angry god’s breath,

Waves caused by his stirring his spoon.

A gibbous moon runs through the clouds.

Suns skip among the fog and haze.

In a lull, waves, in rows, look plowed,

Then boil in an unsolvable maze.

The ship sights land, rocky, tree-lined,

Safe harbor for the terror-blind. 

Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), Sonnet #500

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My Human Disguise.

Can the mind exhaust old beauty, even

One persisting as a form of perfection

Behind bullet-proof glass; we see, then,

With repetition, deem it a confection? 

Yes, La Gioconda, if we let it

Become blind to us, a rotting cliche, 

Or object of ridicule, an idee

Fixe, until we would as soon forget it.

No, lack of imagination can’t close

Her limpid eyes or silence what she knows,

What her kissing lips, brushing our own,

Might whisper in an evanescent tone —

Let me live in you, as you live in me.

I am so you can be because you see . . . .

The Satin Tuning Fork (Yves Tanguy), Sonnet #499

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My Human Disguise.

I cannot tune a guitar very well

Because I pluck a string and hear three tones,

Not one. My inner ears have extra bones.

My head is a struck and struck again bell,

A tuning fork made of satin and silk,

Vibrating musically like stirred milk.

A real tuning fork makes the air explode

And ring with a slowly diminishing 

Volume without ever quite finishing,

An eternal sonic episode.

I tap mine and tighten a tuning post.

At least that note is right. The other strings

Wobble off pitch the way a warbler sings

Or like the humming of a tone-dead ghost.

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

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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

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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