Sonnet

  The Man from China The man from China struts around D.C. And silences the chatter about tariffs. He says, “You’ll like this deal, just wait and see, Call off your trade-war words and snooping sheriffs.” His pocket’s full of cash and oily deals; Just do not talk of how...

  A Poet at the Tower Ah, what a perfect, golden, autumn day. The headsman’s brought the bearded ax, I see. The cocksure ravens strut like popinjays. The river shimmers like a bright malmsey. Make haste and strike; let’s have it done, prithee. The grass, the gentle breeze, the stark...

  The Anonymous Soldier Beneath these granite monoliths we stand, Immortalizing warriors’ names in stone. We oft forget the sacrifices made, For liberty is all we’ve ever known. Amongst these tributes stands an unmarked grave, A peaceful seeming monument of stone. It rises proud for all the brave unnamed, Who...

  The American Spirit (One Voice, 250 Years)   I Brave loving hearts have helped our nation stand, though history forgets the giver’s names; no marble marks the works of helping hands, but countless lives are strengthened all the same. A meal that’s shared; a burden freely borne; a word...

  The Swearing-in of Calvin Coolidge ---Plymouth Notch, Vermont, 1923 Strange, the postman’s loud, insistent knock (The nearest phone, in town, two miles away) Which roused them out of bed at one o’clock, Tired from bringing in the August hay. And stranger still, two telegrams they read By lantern light:...

  Vernal Clinic To regular observers, spring had never seemed So jarringly abnormal as it did this year. Its bright chromatic strains came winging in, some claimed, On airships made from canvas scrap and two-by-four. The whole three months came off as crudely improvised, A makeshift presentation staged without a...

  Omaha Beach The ramp went down, and the brute din of war Was like a furnace. Some collective will Drew us into the water, and the air Bloomed with sour bullets. They sank their roots in me As if I were a rotted corpse. I fell, And I was...

  America: 250 Years Should we commit to celebrate our birth? We’ve run so many laps around the sun, Yet in our nuanced realm upon this earth We may not cherish all that we have done. Our country, on the balance, stood for good. It claimed the peaks of freedom,...

  Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) translated from German by Mary Jane Myers We'll never know his head, its mythic fame, the fiery ripening-apple eyes, although his torso casts a candelabra’s glow, the gaze now dialed down to a lower flame, its gleam preserved. Or else...

  The Council of Infinite Opinions A council met where certainty was banned, And every truth was shaped by shifting hand. “No fact may stand,” they spoke with measured breath, “Unless it bends to every shade of depth.” The wise withdrew; the louder filled the floor, Each syllable a carefully...

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning Has Second Thoughts How do I hate you? Let me count the flaws: I hate you for the sappy way you smile; Your limping gait, as if you had the yaws; Your vague uncertain dreaming, and the vile Habit you have of staying far too long...

  Then and Now The gallery faces return: I name their names, These powers invading dreams, who being dead Are more alive, because of what they mean, Than all the living, ignorant of need. King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere And a whole mythos for a Holy Grail; Achilles’ wrath, thoughts...

  Spring Song Spring sings through the woods, her own special song Sometimes short ’n’ sweet and sometimes too long. It wafts through the branches, it hums in the trees It starts up the dancing of flowers and leaves. With dandelion choirs in yellow and gold The buttercups join in,...

  Mothiavelli I’m thirsty for the fever of her kiss--- The neon sear---the lethal lick she brings. I burn to surf the heat of her abyss. I’ll skirt her scorch to shield my flimsy wings. I’ve heard the zap and breathed the sooty singe Of smitten kin who skimmed the...

  The Sowers by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) translated from Italian by Joseph S. Salemi Strong lads drive the docile oxen through The field. Behind them open furrows steam As plowshares tear the ground in preparation For the sowers’ casting of the grain. Then with a sweeping gesture of their arms...

  Mosi-oa-Tunya Mosi-oa-Tunya is ‘The Thunderous Smoke’; twixt Zambia and Zimbabwe it sits; Doc Livingstone, that missionary bloke observed its wonders, loving it to bits. This waterfall feeds two almighty gorges, descends into a geologic gash one hundred metres deep, and there it forges a one-point-seven-kilometre slash. The longest single...

  The First American Sonnets: David Humphreys by Margaret Coats In 1776, the first known sonnet in the United States of America was written by a young patriot ready to join the continental army. Below, see it and several more by David Humphreys (1752–1818), who was born in Connecticut, and...

  The Swan’s Song He brewed his words in cauldrons on the moors. They doubled as they bubbled to the brim. He conjured clifftop storms and sea-whipped shores On savage isles where wizards’ secrets swim. His words tamed shrews. They kindled gall and guilt. They silenced loyal lips with unhinged rage. They stoked...

  At the No-Win Inn The room for error is across the hall, Between the storage bin for grave mistakes And padlocked doors to closet space where all The skeletons are kept. The rattlesnakes Are on the floor below, along with ranks Of spiders, scorpions, and rabid skunks. Piranhas wait...

  Barabbas They named their chosen one and set him free. They picked a thug who reeked of others’ blood. He bore the stain their wayward hearts could see--- Familiar ground might serve some greater good. They knew the cutthroat path the rebel took, The street where shadows veiled each...

  What We Learn From Breaking Waves Those who climb the furthest up the shore Are not the waves that break from greatest height, Who must contend with those who broke before And spend their force against their backwash flight. More to be admired are quiet swells Who bide their...

  Interdisciplinary Indiscipline A lifetime ago, back in seventh-grade band, “The Bullwhip” had all us kids pledge to expand Our goals for our music. He went on to ask us To double our time spent in personal practice. The girls—mostly woodwinds—were eager to please; Ol’ Bullwhip could always control them...

  By the Waters of Babylon All faces are foreign here, all streets unknown, and even the sun seems like an alien star, darker and redder than a homesick eye. One hundred miles, ten thousand miles, how far is far away? Laptop and telephone pretend to bridge all distances, but...

  Replication and Cessation Your parents had four children, grand-kids eight. But as for great-grandchildren, they’ll have none. How could this come to be? Was it just Fate? Why would Nature, History, Civilization Choose this hour to forsake this life, love, thought? But who can blame the grand-kids? We’d have...

  Re-shifting in Reverse Alas, I fear the world has fallen prey To well-conceived and ill-intended evil; An armageddon; shattered Tao; decay; A shadow play, primeval, medieval. Society re-shifting in reverse Where anarchy is called democracy. An AI rule-of-lawless-universe; The vanguard of a new plutocracy. For hidden deep behind the...

  Morning Glory The mornings are a challenge for the old man. Get up. Get dressed. Get the dogs out. Get them fed. His several pains are worse. It’s cold and dark outside. The world, it seems, is set against him. But he knows that’s not the case. He hums...

  Prayer (5:00 a.m.) Some stubborn pain (the world… the past…) Is peeking through the cracks, and all I want is somehow to at last Come home to something steady, fast, (I won’t say innocence, but still…) To something pure and whole that will In me a simpler soul recall....

  Damon and Pythias The two spoke number lore with every breath, Disciples of Pythagoras and friends, But one was seized and chained, condemned to death As loud opponent of tyrannic trends. He felt a need that normally attends Life’s end, to go and settle his affairs. The tyrant said,...

  At the Wine Bar Embrace the riverlike and endless flow, the rush of energy, the burgundy of Cabernet, Petite Sirah, Merlot, the golden Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, the fevered throbbing, pulsing, beating, blind viniferous sensations, sweet bouquet of pepper, plum, or potpourri, a mind aroused and reeling in a...

  Bombing Iran How sad that war provokes such controversy. Why can’t we just get on with it without A bunch of angry nay-sayers? Lord-a-mercy! “Give Peace a Chance!” “Make Love, Not War!” they shout As if they think it’s 1969 Again. Same anti-war conspiracy Except that now, instead of...

  Spring Storm A stirring in the pine, a tomblike pause, and then a rhythmic misty harmony is tapping on the leaves, as if applause were heralding some heavenly esprit for boughs awakened by the breeze. A veil of steamy gloom obscures the forestland, and droplets in neurotic fits impale...

  Undone Decisions made in haste are doubts deferred. The need to come off confident, to seem As though in charge, is really quite absurd When self-control remains a bootless dream. Those sudden unexpected bouts of rage Belie the promises you whispered in A semblance of remorse and turn the...

  Montaigne and Us He holed up in his tower of stone, alone, Sickened by what he saw had overcome All France: religious wars, the worst they’d known. Was Paris worth a mass grave? Yes, said some. His library well stocked, his pen in hand, His essays surveyed his own...

  Garden Goddess   I. This humble plot of land is bogged in snow And ice, with twigs and brushy sweeps of pine; But soon, the giant marigolds will grow, Emerge from littered leaves and broken vine; For yonder’s where I sprinkled heads of seed In no specific order or...

  To Thine Own Text Be True For My Autocorrect on Valentine’s Day You turn my hope to mope, my bliss to dross, My win to sin, my better into bitter. Your lunacy has left me at a loss. You make my finer fellow-texters titter. I’m now a shitshow of...

Listen, Wishin' Star Listen, you cotton pickin’ Wishin’ Star, I know how far up in the sky you are. I sent a wish up to your starry vaults; I made a wish and I expect results. My wish was quite explicit. I told you who Was one I wished for,...

  Hallmark Holiday Some chocolates in a crimson, heart-shaped box— if ever there’s a thing that says I love you with much less of an effort (maybe socks, some roses or a teddy bear, what have you) I don’t know what it is. The corner stores, the pharmacies, the strip...

  The Mystery That Is You The gasping hulks of rusted wrecks that share with eyeless scavengers the mysteries of Styxlike depths; the lecherous affair of heaving earth expelling centuries of fetal carbons from its fiery womb; grotesque microbic warriors, whose fields of battle on a wisp of breath consume...

  Snowshoeing on a Winter Morning A silver flicker in the tangy pine has stirred us: she, engulfed in puffery of white, and I behind. The nightlong whine of wolfish winds has carved a pageantry of stony icescapes just beyond our womb of crackling hearth. The pinkish blush of dawn...

  Liturgical Loopholes   I. Scheduling Redemption: The Pious Musings of a Serial Sinner I must confess when I transgress I keep my conscience squeaky-clean. A swift disclosure lessens stress. A sinner’s innards burn and roil. I keep my conscience squeaky-clean. A word of mercy quells the boil. I’m quick...