Sonnet

  A Cardinal on a Snowy Day A single cardinal, on a snowy day, Cloistered in a nearby hemlock branch Paints brilliant red onto a winter's gray His plumage, like a scarlet avalanche, O’ersweeps the eye, diverts me from a scene Of whiteness drifting down on dark green boughs. He...

  New Year’s Peeve   I. Cassandra’s Countdown The Eve arrives in sequin-spangled zing. The clock ticks on as tipsy cities glitter With beams of glee eclipsing sorrow’s glare Till midnight kisses burn with bursts of spring Abloom beyond abandoned dreams that litter The gutter neath the rockets’ garish flare....

  Darkness and Dawn   I. Christmas Whispers A brood of vipers slithers in the sun With darkest hearts and airs of starkest white. These snakes of robe and ring and tricky tongue Bedazzle with a bright, misguiding light. They swirl a smoky trail---a spicy spell That leads the lured...

  Virgo Too late, too late, the summertime has gone. Alone, I wander in the bleakening That creeps across the fields before the dawn And beg my heart to not feel anything. The leaves come down in rusting drifts of gold, Set free by winds flown south on silver wings....

  Summer’s End ---an Alfred Dorn sonnet It must have been a dream: the nodding boughs Of loveliness, midsummer nights of calm, The days festooned in floral spray finespunned; But seasons change, and now the plaintive soughs Of sadness rustle through the trees. What balm Is there for coming days...

  Blooming Early or Late? This tyro of six years reads hardly a word. The idea of language displayed on a screen or printed on paper strikes him as absurd— no matter for minds like his, agile and keen. It’s stuff—string and tape, stacks of cardboard and paper— he much...

  Magic Show, North Country The puddling snowbank spills a silver trace, its melt a mirror shattered on the earth. A clutch of clouds wings, birdlike, through blue space above a garden in the throes of birth. First come snowdrops, then the bumptious crocus. Pickets of narcissus will fence tulips’...

  Grandbaby Oh little child, you bring the mysteries of rainbows, storybooks, and pixie dust to life with tiny smiles. Your mama fussed with pink and perky bows and gowns, to please her special angel, pausing once to tease with cooing whispers, even as she shushed the puppy (though without...

  Burnham Beeches A weary pilgrim rests ‘neath ageless trees, Enraptured by a blackbird’s ancient rhyme; The tones of his soft voice upon the breeze Invoke the metered poetry of Time. Each phrase is like a faded memory Of many lives our pilgrim led before; Each life, since passed, transformed...

  Perfect Synchronicity He thought back to that hour at dusk’s still height, When bird-song sounded both, outside and in him, And body’s form dissolved in fading light--- No line to part the outer from within him. He closed his eyes, lest vision should betray The boundless calm that gathered...

  A Genuine Petrarchan Note on William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets How did it end, then, for Romantic Bill? He labored long on Church-of-England lines— Which had to be, fans thought, of all designs The most surprising. He pursued it still. Octave and sestet he worked hard to fill With pious...

  Feeble Best We try to earn God’s love but can’t succeed. When on His narrow path, we trip and fall. How could we not? We’re merely noise and need. Just shrieking infants, unaware we’re small. To us, our shrieks sound like a symphony. To Him, each one must sound...

  The Ground of Being Consider that our world may be sewn through With sentience, intelligence and thought. The dead philosophy that we've been taught Has bridled us, imprisoned me and you. Behold, Life! In its innumerable forms, The glory of an animated sky. Expanding from our penchant to ask...

  Swimming to the Waterfall at Uvongo In the heat of the early winter By the haunts of the southern strand. Filled with a lust for adventure We forwent the safety of land. But the cliffs watched on with suspicion, In silence they warned us and said: “Beware of the...

  Timeless The timeless, gentle swish of wave-washed sand; The echoed “chock” of rounded wave-washed stone; The silent, skittered feet of pipers and A distant sea-tossed crab boat’s throbbing drone. The squawk of gull, the sharp-shrill caw of crow; The unseen shaft of air where eagle’s soar; The dance of...

  Early Days The scent of roses, and the blazing sun, The gas pump next door busy—day’s begun. No school; some insects flit. I feel the heat Upon my skinny shoulders and my feet. As Mama’s chickens cackle in their pen, I revel in the world I’m in. But then...

  Sonnet of the Hardened Heart Care less, I warn myself; bother no more With inner crevices: prying the shell Like scabs (rough, oozing, sore), which crust, but tell Of tumults against the psychic seabed floor; It is in vain. Swollen and hard around The meat (like newborn skin, or...

  The Golden Soldier ---for my grandfather He had a calming charm. He always spoke Of garden-basking instances of joy--- His apple yield; his acorn-laden oak Abuzz with busy squirrels, keen and coy. Each dusk he sipped a whisky in his chair, Eyes drinking in the shimmer of his wife....

  Alas! “Alas!” A word of grief and rueful mourning; A gut-punch from what was but is no more Or “almost was,” miscarried, died aborning. “Alas!” A raven croaking, “Nevermore.” “Alas!” Shall time deface, erase, surrender The still-warm memory of love’s last kiss? A gasping grasp at fading spectral splendor;...

  In the Days of the Green Comet (February, 2023) A green-tailed comet’s in the sky tonight; Neanderthals and cats with sabre teeth were last to see it glistening this bright. But neither now is wandering beneath this ice-and-dust phenomenon whose head bedazzles as it closes on the sun. When...

  Like a Book He reads me like a book, the One Who wrote Me; knows, it seems, each page of me by heart And can to my chagrin succinctly quote Each savory (and somewhat less so) part. His first draft was, of course, a work of art, But soon...

  Persona Assume a work identity, conform And hide behind an urban harlequin, Conceal the tattoo beneath a uniform, Desert yourself and cloak the genuine. The Greeks devised a rich formality, Dramatic masks of frozen mirth and gloom. A shaman’s rites in anonymity Demand an alien spiritual costume. Conceive of...

  Angel I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set free. —Michelangelo (attributed) One wonders what an angel does all day. Just sit there, wings slack, staring into space? But that assumes space-time is where she’ll stay. A comrade of the host that fell from grace?...

Unjust Trade   I. An endless wet: Earth’s gathered sea-salt tears Wept-swept before a rising, darkening gale, As dim horizon fades and disappears Behind a slave ship’s squared tri-masted sail. Her hold full-filled with human suffering, With chain-torn flesh sustained by lice-laced gruel, To serve the needs of cotton, cane...

. A Sonnet upon a Most Ungrateful Gnat Upon my back a spiteful gnat did sting, I cried aloud, and clapped my hand in pain; The knave returned, still buzzing on the wing, As though my torment were his chiefest gain. I struck him down, yet soon there came his...

. Hope By no means has my hope turned to despair. I’ve not the wakeful nights, the woeful gaze Up at the ceiling as I chew the day’s Disasters and a world beyond repair. I’ve not that inner desolation where Your every thought is but a paraphrase Of emptiness and...

. Band of Brothers A picture of two soldiers in their prime. A scribbled note in cursive on the back. “My Dearest Son, if ever comes a time When I am gone, whatever you may lack Or need, just phone this number. When you do, Just tell the man who...

. Autism Sonnet The lights are much too light and sounds too loud; And thoughts are only thought in black and white; Try to tolerate a middling crowd And talk so small, so pointless, so polite. To hyper-focus is the narrow way That leads to life, that few will ever...

. A Sonnet for My One True Love Forever let the night go on and on, My body to your softness gently pressed, Nor let the touch of shameful, blushing dawn, Wake me, part us, and end a lover’s rest. How I adore your smooth and silky form, And how...

. Sonnet XIII On days you do not need my sound embrace, When tenderness and warmth envelop you And Fortune shines upon your amber face And suffering and sorrow are but few, I wonder what your mind then does with me? From the shore the grey tide pulls away; Of...

. The Comedy of Rosalind ---As You Like It I show more mirth than I am mistress of. This forest and my folly prompted change Of sex, and my disguise dissembles love. I’m altered by men’s hose and doublet strange, While sweet Orlando carves on every tree The name I...

. On Shen Yun . I. The land of China. Deep in history That like a river flows with people and culture, Extending into misty mystery. But now this fascinating, gleaming treasure Is buried in the mud beneath the beast Of communism seeking to destroy The goodness and the beauty...

. How Many Homes? ---January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires Twelve thousand lost, from stricken memories more Schools, churches, meeting places, shops and homes Of residents and others moved away, Bereaved of yesterday disastrously. The concrete evidence that life was lived In cool or agonizing passageways Lies toxic waste in space...

. . Sonnet 1 I felt like trying something new today, And so I put my pen upon a page To mimic Shakespeare's famous olden way— A style which, I hear, was all the rage. So here I am committing fourteen lines, To document my thoughts dynamically: I think it...

. Snow Sonnet Where silent flakes of whiteness fill the air And cutting winds of winter come to rule The bitter storm of new year strips all bare With iciness at once perfect and cruel. We drift into an otherworldly realm Where spectral pallor shrouds the sleeping earth Such beauty...

. Dim and Not He carries one white candle in the space Beneath cathedral vaults. He has to hold His hand in front of it so just a trace Of light escapes. The candle’s flame shines gold Yet it is blocked by palm and fingers, so A forward gleam is...

. Imitating Shakespeare’s Sonnet 107 . Sonnet 107 __by William Shakespeare Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse...

. Just Doin' Our Job As if they didn’t have enough to do already---harvesting the light to make food for the tree and seeing to it you and I have clean air every day---leaves slake their host tree’s constant thirst by managing the process whereby unseen roots will take the...

. Diners For single men alone, what impulse spurs us To find them everywhere? –the burned-out lights, the squat brick block, so many times repurposed, the worn, clichéd inside, lit over-bright: Plump rows of sticky pseudo-leather booths, And dusty ferns suspended from the ceiling. The waitress looms like Venus, sturdy...

. https://youtu.be/B9aMXFVpFEk . . Andrew Benson Brown's epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, chronicles the major events of the American Revolution. He writes history articles for American Essence magazine and resides in Missouri. Watch his Classical Poets Live videos here.