Sonnet #273

In morning twilight, the moon shone bright beyond
the whisper clouds, a purple blue, a brightest white
I thought to snap a picture of the moon, but I
had left my phone inside the house, the moment gone
I knew, and would be broken if I went and came
again out here, beneath the orange tree; the range
of twilight colors, the shift of clouds, all changed,
the grandeur of this moment moon will never be the same

(At my mother's house, last week we scoured old albums
She said she was amazed at all the pictures with no one
in them, monuments and mountains, wasted ink, common
for now the things she wanted most were family, her children.)

The greatest meal I ever had, I think, was a glass of cool water
On a warm day in summer. Life's beauty lies in such simple affairs.

Sonnet #272

The dead leaves and dirty ground will keep the roots
So leave the mess where it is found until the spring
Be patient, for until the music of the frosts unstrings
We never know what swell of song will stomp the boots
What keening winds will come, these broken ruins
Will bear the worst of all these songs to come
And leave beneath the grotesque twisted bones
The sweet of green wrapped up inside the cambium
Be gentle, be patient, leave all the leaves to blow
Allow the stalks to wilt upon the ground
Where fireflies root and salamander stow
Until the rise of sun and heat comes round
There the worms devour and there the toads:
A messiness is living when the symphony resounds!

Sonnet #271

The stone fruits in autumn are an exhaustion

I can understand: They pushed so hard

Into the light, reached every root until exertion

swelled into the bloom of life, a hundred new words

hang from every limb for weeks, and then they break

The wind blows, the dry times come, the storms

And the sun, itself, yawns apart, leans back;

What else can be done but decay a little, let the worms

among the fallen leaves, and let the leaves

we lost become the soil we eat, devouring self

And devouring those we welcome as thieves;

From the outside, we are sleeping, that's what they tell

But what no one sees is roots reaching, ever creating

The stonefruits and I look snowstorm still, roots reaching

Sonnet #270

The line between nature and man is easy
There is a trail along the ground and mowers
Come to clear the path, but tractors
Don’t travel into trees, so there, a line you see

It follows us home if we let it, where the line
could be anywhere, hidden behind a fence
In empty flower pots where anything's presence
Is allowed - spiders and ants and weeds, it's fine

Let the line fall over the night sheets, where dreams
and possibilities wrestle in the dark, wild places
kept and unkempt, a hidden shadow kingdom
where the eyes look out from darkness, faces
unknown by even us, carry this unknown seams
loosely in the daylight, be vessels for feral graces

Sonnet #269

All the elders come together, all the young men
and women come, gather where the kings
will stand above the dais, where they ring
the new season of the lord, and we can bend

the ears of heaven with our sacrifices, our prayers
At the very top of lungs, where no king shouts
back and is heard above the din of our voices out
loud, where all the songs we sing are greater

Than all the noise of kings, the cymbals and din
of commanding voices, where no gunfire quells
the fury of the voices, we can shout the bullets down
We can shout them all down, where all is not well
And shout and sing and shout until the bells
of heaven are all that's greater, and rings the crowns

Sonnet #268

My body is here; my mind is not
I get lost on the old trails of memory
Lost in the books that I carry and that carry
Me in return, lost in the way I wish what
I could do to make things better for us
And what I want to do to make my hands
Still, my head still, to try and fulfill plans
And finish what I started: to leave no mess
When I am done. My body is here, but I
Am an energy vibrating in time’s shadow
I will never be here with you, never just lie
In the darkness, where the wood shadows
My face and we can pause together as I
Am an energy, moving and dreaming and off I go