Sonnet #154

Nature remembers every cut, every stone
The city is a forest that we forget to see
We see the building past the trees, not the trees
But we never left her when we built our homes
There is no division between city and country
The trees on the streets rise up, the possums
and insects hum. The cats run wild, hunt for some
beetle or songbird or mouse, who sneak into our pantry.
The trees of the city, the grasses and hedges
The flowers that bloom and the migratory birds
We see only parking lots, not their edges
We see only roadways, unknown we are herded
Climb past the fences, walk where development alleges
But never start, and thistles break through the ruins, hard

Sonnet #153

For every season of the birds there is a song
Because to sing is to remember time
We hand our story down with music, rhyme.
Time that changes everything, we do all wrong
When we betray the music of our memories
That taught us how to live. The song of children
Is the song of learning, we tell them
How to know the letters, how to tell no lies
Then, the dancing season comes, the quarrels
The quest to be a strong woman or man,
The love that burns all flowers, burns all morals
The third season, we're the singers where we stand
Humming while we work, giving songs for sorrows,
Masters of the art of how to woman and man
Until the dirges come, the last season, winter, narrows.

With apologies to Shelley and Vonnegut

I met a sailor from an antique shore
He told me this... "Out in the cold shallows
Where the pollution persists, a poor-
Ly built tower lies tumbled and hollow
Upon some rust and rocks, a slogan there
Where once a giant name, writ-large
Decrepit, now, if it ever was more and better,
A seawashed gaudy gold-gilt plastic visage
Hideous and haughty, 'I am Trump, the winner
And the best president for the economy
Where oil wells pumped, and dollars shimmered,
Look upon my amazing properties and praise me!
I was the best president; everyone says so!"'
The lonely sea has swallowed all. So it goes.

Sonnet #152

oh hard bitter rue, what became of you?

dishwater green, and dun-colored yellow blooms

aromatic oils to kill your neighbors for elbow room

left a rash when anyone tried to walk near you

eventually little golden pimples emerged as infections

they turned black and pulsated, living, growing

Until the little eggshell cracks, exposing

The servants of the rue, upon close inspection

The tiny things cleared out the foliage, made room

For new growth, and ate away other infections

The bigger, the prettier, striped golden white and blue

Ate skins when they cracked to make new skins

Chrysalis, and patience for the fruit of the rue:

Swallowtails soaring like velvet paintings that flew

Sonnet #151

They will use the nuclear bombs again,
I know it's hard to hear this, but you must
Because the future is no place for just the just
The fact that men can dream of it is enough sin
To know they mark history by slaughtering
To know the war can be won by wiping out
Genocide with a phone call, no drill sergaent's shouts
And history will remember who, the world trembling
The feeling of being big, being strong, from a sneeze
That sinks a billion destinies, a little spark and fizzle.
The bombs will fall. I promise you this. The wheeze
of dying men who dream of glory see the puzzle
of geography as a territory to bring to knees
They will. I promise they will. I shout until muzzled.