Sonnet

  Let the Music Play Beginner's line dance; step 3 times and kick. They can't keep up yet, but they're...

  Living Psalm ---February, 1997 A tempest rages on within my soul, And tears flow freely down my troubled face,...

  Foam We come into this world awash in tears, Mourning our incipient separation— Too soon we age and leave...

  Invocation Lift up these leaden eyes that slumber still, Cocooned within undreaming restless dark. Celestial Sun, burn through the...

  The Mahjong Flowers   Orchid Lone in the cold of working solitude, The scholar and the orchid strain to...

  From California to Louisiana No more the mountains rising blue and gray, nor oceans crashing near to shore on...

  All Flesh Is Grass “When the ungodly are green as the grass, and when all the workers of wickedness...

  Ode to a Dragonfly High in the torrid, torpid dog-day air A shape, elusive, skeletal, darts by--- Yet elongated,...

  Hobby Horse Not like the winged stallion of Greek fame with Olympic wings aloft from sky to sky. Here,...

  Government Issue Found in a junkshop, nestled in between Dark bottles and some ill-assorted scraps: A battered thing, its...

  This Too Shall Pass "Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word...

  A Paradox They're all too sharp and bright. Sedulous kids. Rich parents raised them. Teachers, old and wise, preserve...

  Chemo Refusal Doctor’s gown off. He looks again. Goes tough, speaks plain: "It’s back. Aggressive. Don’t deny. Without the...

  I This mystic draw, these pangs I feel for you--- Are they mere sparks, the scent of pheromones, Complex...

  What Folly Dares What folly dares inflict its spectral pow’r To grieve my love and I who burn to...

  The Man from China The man from China struts around D.C. And silences the chatter about tariffs. He says,...

  A Poet at the Tower Ah, what a perfect, golden, autumn day. The headsman’s brought the bearded ax, I...

  The Anonymous Soldier Beneath these granite monoliths we stand, Immortalizing warriors’ names in stone. We oft forget the sacrifices...

  The American Spirit (One Voice, 250 Years)   I Brave loving hearts have helped our nation stand, though history...

  The Swearing-in of Calvin Coolidge ---Plymouth Notch, Vermont, 1923 Strange, the postman’s loud, insistent knock (The nearest phone, in...

  Vernal Clinic To regular observers, spring had never seemed So jarringly abnormal as it did this year. Its bright...

  Omaha Beach The ramp went down, and the brute din of war Was like a furnace. Some collective will...

  America: 250 Years Should we commit to celebrate our birth? We’ve run so many laps around the sun, Yet...

  Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) translated from German by Mary Jane Myers We'll never know...

  The Council of Infinite Opinions A council met where certainty was banned, And every truth was shaped by shifting...

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning Has Second Thoughts How do I hate you? Let me count the flaws: I hate you...

  Then and Now The gallery faces return: I name their names, These powers invading dreams, who being dead Are...

  Spring Song Spring sings through the woods, her own special song Sometimes short ’n’ sweet and sometimes too long....

  Mothiavelli I’m thirsty for the fever of her kiss--- The neon sear---the lethal lick she brings. I burn to...

  The Sowers by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) translated from Italian by Joseph S. Salemi Strong lads drive the docile oxen...

  Mosi-oa-Tunya Mosi-oa-Tunya is ‘The Thunderous Smoke’; twixt Zambia and Zimbabwe it sits; Doc Livingstone, that missionary bloke observed its...

  The First American Sonnets: David Humphreys by Margaret Coats In 1776, the first known sonnet in the United States...

  The Swan’s Song He brewed his words in cauldrons on the moors. They doubled as they bubbled to the brim. He conjured...

  At the No-Win Inn The room for error is across the hall, Between the storage bin for grave mistakes...

  Barabbas They named their chosen one and set him free. They picked a thug who reeked of others’ blood....

  What We Learn From Breaking Waves Those who climb the furthest up the shore Are not the waves that...

  Interdisciplinary Indiscipline A lifetime ago, back in seventh-grade band, “The Bullwhip” had all us kids pledge to expand Our...

  By the Waters of Babylon All faces are foreign here, all streets unknown, and even the sun seems like...

  Replication and Cessation Your parents had four children, grand-kids eight. But as for great-grandchildren, they’ll have none. How could...

  Re-shifting in Reverse Alas, I fear the world has fallen prey To well-conceived and ill-intended evil; An armageddon; shattered...