Abstract Imaginary Garden (Paul Klee), Sonnet #510

Imagination is the canary

In the mind. (Reason is only a song.)

We’re dead without the imaginary,

The will to conjure what might have been wrong

In what we’ve done, or to confront the pain

Of a child we failed to love or console.

How we ignore the garden of the brain!

We stare only at the eye level bole

Of the dogwood and ignore its blossoms,

Think ideas instead of chrysanthemums.

Compassion, the garden’s brightest flower,

Can’t be described except in images.

It hides, folded in a secret bower,

Mostly unseen for a thousand ages.

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Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition (Cristiano Banti), Sonnet #509

Galileo is gone and forgotten.

The earth is again as flat as a coin

Around which the sun is slowly going,

Nourishing all that is raw and rotten.

A feather falls faster than a lead ball.

Beelzebub will find you if you call.

The bald liar is our new scientist;

There is no proven fact he cannot twist.

Poor Galileo was forced to recant:

Today we have the canting sycophant.

Hence it’s obvious that the earth must cool;

To think differently makes me a fool.

I’ve seen a bald eagle flying backwards.

A plague of fat rats invades our back yards.

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

My Human Disguise.

Forsythia 2020, Sonnet #508

Because beauty is awake to itself,

We quicken in its consideration,

We take ourselves down from the storage shelf,

We expand like infant constellations. 

Forsythia blooms bright, sun dressed, bespoke,

Before hardly a bud bursts on the oak,

Because all loveliness can’t be present

At one moment in time; it’s hesitant,

And sends stems and blossoms into the air

In portions unsteady senses can bear.

Ugly is an ugly word for absence

Of beauty — let’s call it nothing at all,

And give it modest if any credence.

This is Eden and it will never fall.

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

Sunrise On The Matterhorn (Albert Bierstadt), Sonnet #507

There is in sunlight no matter of chance.

Even concealed by fog or thunder storm,

Or the earth in its rotational dance,

Sunrise will mend the dark’s misshapen form,

Making a mountain of the Matterhorn,

And tipping the point of the smallest thorn.

Like a flower’s blossoming, the sunrise

Blooms too slow for even the quickest eyes.

It’s best to turn away for a moment —

Turn back to measure the burning’s ascent.

Eyes closed I watch my eyelids brightening

And concentrate — a mental lightning

Transforms a thought into a warming star,

Renewal of hope brought home from afar.

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

My Human Disguise.

Vitruvian Man (da Vinci), Sonnet #506

Even da Vinci needed a compass —

No one draws a perfect circle freehand.

(You can see the pinhole at the navel.)

He had to be careful not to press

Too hard before the line came to an end.

A ruler kept the square true and stable.

Much harder was the sketching of the man.

(Or is it someone who is his own twin?)

In length, are all four of his arms the same,

Or are the upper two slightly longer

To reach the curvature with his fingers?

When I first saw this imagined figure,

I knew I’d seen him many times before,

Past recall, him seeing me from afar.

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

Almond Blossom (Van Gogh), Sonnet #505

April after a winter mildly cold,

With neither blizzards or dangerous ice.

The blossoms burst early and gently bold,

Aerating my back yard with perfumed spice.

A sudden drop in temperature,

Lasting a day, is not enough to nip

New life — an hour of light snow seems pure,

Yet leaves on some blossoms a tiny pip.

Then a week of cloudless sunlight reigns.

Snowdrops and crocuses proliferate,

Escaping from their gardens to the lawns.

Now for an hour most mornings it rains,

More to refresh us than to irritate.

The sleeping soul doesn’t awake — it dawns.

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

The Dance of Life (Edvard Munch), Sonnet #504

The beach sand is gone, cut away

By high waves from the winter storms,

So we dance as if we feel gay,

Madly whirling, twisted forms. 

The band — drum, violin, guitar —

Knows only waltzes, jigs, and rags;

Its sense of rhythm races, lags.

Some of us linger at the bar,

Leaving women alone and lost,

Heartbroken at their rejection,

While others twirl till their feet ache.

The sun sets like a golden host

In a chalice of its reflection

In the still waters of the lake.

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