Sonnet #313

The time the grapes are ready is the time
The mockingbird comes hunting in
The tangle of the vine and trellis lines
A dart and hop and hunt and climb

I see the bird and he sees me, we speak
A language of possession old as life
In a glance, he says the world is strife
And all he sees is ripe is life, he takes

So I allow and see him take and when
He’s full, I clean a bucket, and some shears
And take and take and take and then
When he returns to vines he wears
The gaze of loss, where once was friend
And all the grapes are mine. And he stares.

Sonnet #312

I have a kind of restlessness that wakes
Me up before the dog, like a possum
I wander in the dark outside before daybreak
And sweat away the anxious dreams that come
When I am still awake, they chase me down
The street, and hide in shadows, passing cars
I hear the bad dreams barking and forlorn
Against the fence line, and the black fast dart
Of cats, all black in streetlight shadows, racing
Under cars, I walk until my dreams don’t hurt
Or at least until my legs hurt more, from pacing
They follow in the darkness, cling upon my shirt
Bad dreams, bad dreams, I wish to negotiate
A peaceful treaty, we’ll break bread on broken plates

Sonnet #311

A wise man told me to live for work

Never kill time, because my will

To rise up and make my mark fills

Me up and time’s shadow, death, always smirks

But I waste what I want, and encourage the same

Your work will falter, too, and when it does

It won’t matter whether you were in the throes

Of genius, driven and strong, or if your quiet name

Relaxed into ease and infamy. Diadems drop

As wise women sing, and our walk sends

Every moments’ step into a virgin snowfall, so stop,

Drink the wine, and ease into a fine, cool autumn

be kind enough to time and death that when it is the when

You can laugh and have a brandy with them

Sonnet #310

The traveling bards that hide in the trees

Ask so little of us who love their songs

Trees and flowers and keep the cats inside too long

If you can, and leave the garden be

The jubilee season, they journey south and sing to all

The songs they share as they go

Their gaudy costumes, their nimble dances, the show

All the world is a stage, the leaf curtain falls

The spotlight leans into their beautiful glow

Time the thief who gathers sins

Say this: say I’m weary, say I’m slow

Say the earth declines where I set in

I set some seed out, planted trees and flowers

The birds in their passing sing my hours

Sonnet #309

What memorial stone will we place

Where glaciers fade into the sea and all

The trees collapse into the barren soil

And burn -- we stand alone upon the face

Of stone, digging down to caves to save

The tiny pieces of our world that can be kept

In darkness, there, and no one else has wept

About the dead for quite some time. We’ll brave

The darkness, there, and eat the rocks

And carve memorials with broken teeth

To all the creatures we devoured, these blocks

Will stand until they erode or begin to breathe

No doubt we will invent some realism

And build and paint some glaciers in some convenient chasm.

Sonnet #308

In the park, there is a trail that runs through woods

It’s paved and there are bridges over rocks

The trees along the path are pruned and blocks

Prevent the mud from flowing like it would

It’s such a simple thing to see the seasons

Step out onto the trail, there’s wooded lines

There the flowers bloom and snakes unwind

And trees blossom, seed, then come undone

My son rides quiet on this trail, there’s deer

The dogs pass through, he smiles and calls out

The birds rise with sunlight, cicadas there

I took my son to church and he knew nothing

And I knew nothing, and they all knew nothing.

Sonnet #307

When the trains came to this country

They blew holes through mountains

The tracks ran on blood and misery

And everyone cheered them on the plains

I imagine a country with no tracklines laid

No highways carving cliffs of construction

That rise above the grass sea and river braids

A place as empty of us, some dirt tracks run

A few old blacktops twisting from river towns

In one hundred years this will be how it’s done

When planes fly to coastlines and cities, and drown

Among the dust where people move on who had cheered

The mountains bear the scars a thousand years

Sonnet #306

Coyotes know the streets, just so, they know

The nights when lanes are clear

They know the lights change and the fears

When engines rumble in the hills and grow

My friends, my romans, countrymen, you want to know your streets?

Tag coyote where she sleeps, and let

Her walk the night, where quiet footpaws set

And tag the cats and tag the dogs and watch their feet

The streets are only borrowed by all that step

Even we who build and claim to own do not

Own ground: we walk in daylight drive

In all hours and only for a moment hold our spot

And never see a corner or a place where thrive

Seeps in from forests, where wild things plot

Adventures unimagined, life and death

A story of familiar homes where mysteries breathe

*(Author's note: I think sonnets can be a little or short as needed. Still works like a sonnet.)

Sonnet #305

We walk in shadows in our heads

We stumble blind from room to room

As the shin bumps we learn our path to bed

This is a metaphor for how we speak and groan

It’s a symbol, of course, this living in a house

With other people in it, where we walk in the dark

Squint into the slanted light and seek a spouse

We will bump into each other, soft and hard

So these familiar steps will bend towards painless paths

Our fellow housemates bump and wander, and lest

The metaphor extend too far beyond the grass

Of night, let’s just say the dark must be addressed

And all who speak will claim the path ahead

Always sing out where future footfalls lead

Sonnet #304

The solution is so simple but if only were complex

If all we have to do to save ourselves

Is slow down, plant trees, garden, live well

Stop driving for a while, and have respect,

It seems so simple, plant a tree a day and then

Stop driving for a while, eat at home

From the garden, where joyfully grown,

And then we save the world, so simple, yet

Better it be some feat of engineering

Some massive construct moonbase crypto bet

Better it be a scheme so wild and difficult in constant steering

Make it visible from space and take a global bond debt

Make it corporate, make it loud, make it swallow workers whole

Only these salvations are permitted to the bold

Sonnet #303

Reclining in the lime leaves, still as stone,

The green anole lizard dreams, smiling

To sleep among the citrus trees, reclining

Where smell resolve the nightmares as they come,

I walked before the twilight turning lights 

on as I went, a violation of the calming sky

The creatures of the moon came up to try

and climb into the lightbulbs and the bright

Blessed darkness, we will always break the veil

And even into shadows of the sky we send our drones

We reach against the death to kill what kills

And analyze the dreams that hide in bones

But the reclining lizard dreams and smiles so still

Just wait, he sighs, for all light and heat will come 

Sonnet #302

Will the birds remember me, when my garden runs to ruin?

The grapevines wild and rambling free, the trees

So wide and beckoning, I will be

Standing in a shadow of a kingdom’s come,

And birds, my friends of fair weather, passing

As wind and rains roll on, my friends who come

They take what they need and then fly on

And I stand at the window, watching them wrestling

For a place to stand among the powerlines

Do they know how much I love them?

Do they know the quiet glow of joy unwind,

With the cardinals’ flash of red and pigeons’ waddling zen,

In some shadow kingdom, the eye of god will be a bird

And it will, indifferent to me, speak a single word.

Sonnet #301

If all the chickens in all the silos were set free

some survive a little longer and walk in moonlight 

and daylight and dappled forest shade and fight

down into the roots and live, we would see

More chickens than we could ever devour

More birds than any man could ever take

Of course there would be damage and break

Where niches in the web of life would sour

But think, set free, loose and limber and running

where all the corners of the meadows hold them

How these birds would swell in numbers, sunning

on rocks, stunning in bright feathers, hunting, feeding them

who hunt, an abundance beyond the work of man

Two birds in the bush is worth more than one in the hand.

Sonnet #300

Once I stood in a market square before the town 

Was ready to wake up, and the cathedral rang her bells

I stopped and listened and waited for the chime and swell

To decay, a gorgeous song, a ritual of sound

That marks a city holy; and when it died away

The pigeons cooed again, returned to rafters,

The windows opened up and all that rattled plaster

of the old city shook loose the night's dust and gray

If the bells ring, and no one is there to hear it...?

If there is someone there, who remembers the bells,

But no bells remain, how will the echo bear it?

To stand in the quiet morning, once, to know, to tell.

I swear upon the empty rooms, all music echoes still

The winds of time will carry all sweet whispers down to still

Sonnet #299

I mow the grass, and grass regrows, and grows

We dust the furniture of course, we must

And sweep, But next week there’ll be more dust

And I plucked the rose and placed in vase but the rose

Will wilt the week away, and die as plain

To be replaced again by next week’s rose

And all the furnishings will wear in my repose

Where my body presses down and causes strain

We wear down, we wear down, we wear all the way

In factories workers walk into fire dressed like spacemen

At home they shower off the sweat and hear radios play

The music plays a song and plays that song again

That brilliant singer travels to another town to play

And every week we raise a god from death in bread and wine

Sonnet #298

Heads you win - Tails I lose, so all that's left

Is to hope the coin lands on its side

And sticks there, a lucky break, my ride

to greatness counts on this, no theft

Just legal limbo in the corners of the rules

Where you and I can tie a little, and I

can take a little bit of what you hide

And the rules you write for me, my tools

Otherwise must belong to you and work

To make you richer, but I pay to toss the coin

My entry fee is paid, and I will never shirk

My duties, but I'm feeling lucky, and I think I'll join

Your club if this coin lands just so, I smirk

before you throw it up, because I believe in coins

When I'm one of you, I'll call the unlucky ones jerks

Sonnet #297

The only place the cardinal hides in red

Is when the pomegranate blooms have come in

spring

Those huge dresses burning red and cardinal’s flapping wings

For all the year, he waited for a safe spot screaming red

And for this brief moment in the tree, he has hid,

For all the year and turnings, I have waited for this day

When I could hide inside a the brightness forgotten, unseen, I say

What truth I need, and it drowns in other words and other ways

For this brief moment, I am no one worth to know

A voice among the wilderness, where I, in quiet, pray

To keep these flowers I have gathered here, and what seeds I sow

And when these bright flowers turn to fruit, my hiding will decay

And all my songs will call the wicked hunters to my home

Sonnet #296

If someone is going to have a monster, then

I have decided I should have it, first. Why not?

It will follow where I lead it, and menace and cause hurt

To them. It will be my monster. Mine. Before they can.

If we must live in a world of monsters, which we do

And I must live in a world afraid of all of you

And who will get the first monster to do for them and do 

It's best if I have the monster. I'm responsible, you

Will only use a monster to hurt me

So I will hurt you first, this pain I have

This fear, I give it all. The monster howls for me

I feed the monster, pet it, name it, I am brave

The monster will always respect the leash and me

It will bend to me - I'm sure it will - and never turn to leave

Sonnet #295

The trail I ran went under highways, so

I heard the echo of the cars and saw the pillars there

So like cathedrals, these hidden palaces, bare

Of all but holiest of things, stripped back to

Just the drainage water, the algae in the water

The desiccated wrecks of trash and clothes and blown in things

That echo back to life’s use, ghostly things

For ghostly places, where lost priests wander

The stripped back essence of all holy art

I am here, desperately here, this spray paint spectacle

The way the columns hold the sky apart

Where the muscles of the world, the ventricles

Flow so fast, and in those shadows hearts

Echo, lost souls, lost souls, angels of drained potentials

Sonnet #294

The mantis takes the color of flowers,

the shape of leaves and thorn, the hunter

always looks alike to what has power

to seduce the victim close, it's hard to fear

such beauty, the smell in the air of finest 

nectar, the promise of food or drink, all clear;

There are jobs where people do their best

That people ought not to do, folks wind down

Working and falling behind and working and behind

The basilisk waits for us in the million wires grown

where we allow it to grow, the coiling and unwind

in shadow places, in the edges of the law and the known

Approach the flower at your own peril, be wary, be brave

The snapping jaws will close. For retirement, save.

Sonnet #293

If I could explain this slowly to every man and woman

with money, who does not wish to pay for the poor:

You Will Pay More to Hold Them Down If You Do Not Pay For

Giving Them Enough. You will build yourselves golden prisons 

hire armed guards. You'll pay to build a world of panopticons

Because none of them can be trusted if they do not have enough

The cost of policing, surveillance, enforcement, laws so tough

that decent folk fear it, it has a cost in dollars, squatting on

your golden horde is very high. Beyond that cost, you cannot walk

down streets in peace unarmed, you will never know the city

As a place of peace, only as a place where people talk

And power is your only word to share, build your worst kind of pretty

Your empty-eyed children will tremble at your funerary wakes

And the fear you feel could fade with just that little mercy and pity, 

Sonnet #292

The birds have no reason to sing, I think -

The sun rises, song rises, when foraging

Is more important than music, storaging

The extra for a leaner night, and I think

The song reveals the birds to hawks, snakes

To all the hunters of the morning, who hear

Who listen close and move, there’s no fear

Of death when singing, the shimmy and shake

Of their dance among the branches is not

Meant for love, just yet, and even if it was

They sing in all seasons, these birds, not 

Just when spring arrives - there is no because

To songbirds, we are wrong to make their thoughts

With measures meant for music meant for us

When all the songs of morning are sung for no one

Sonnet #291

Things feel wrong all the time, like we

Walked down a road and got lost there

We pretend we are not lost, we see

The way things are like this, the most

We do about this is we say to cowboy up

To strap your big person pants on and work

Until you can’t even think about how we struck

A bargain to begin with that began with so much hurt

I am waiting for my son to wake alone

I can hear the wind blowing outside;

I remember how the parasitic wasps’ bones

Are built upon the agony of a moth child,

When the fig tree beckons, I savor wasps’ work

The tree envelopes, too, becomes the shape it hurts.

Sonnet #290

At evening twilight, walking, I must wonder how 

much of all the grass I see is living, how much a ghost

We do not seek the ghosts of tiny things, no spectral host

Made up of mayflies, tree stumps, blades of grass, flow

of ancient rivers dwindling underground, but the memory

of cities, the echo of that energy, rises greater than man

from space, we see the oldest roads in desert sands 

We see the outline of the walls of other centuries

empires lost to stories, I question whether houses

of all I see, if they have not more than this burned down

And what I see is an illusion of a place, where ghost houses

stand, ghost cities hold a shape in time, and remember how

these things used to be: All the residents are ghosts, all espoused

of their vast kingdoms come from will to remain - illusions, proud

Sonnet #289

There is a time for everything under the moon

A time to toss, a time to turn, a time to think of waking

A time to try water, hot tea, hot milk, to ease the aching

A time to give up on sleep and leave the bedroom

What will I do with this wild and precious darkness?

There's no one here but me. This is my secret place

A garden in darkness, the toad songs and cats' chase

The blowing spring winds carry lost things, in starkness,

There is a season for lost dreams, I hunt them in shadow

Among the shadows, I will find my peace without rest

In watching my weary waking world and dream to know

What darkness called me here to see, what little, what left?

There is a time for everything under the moon, I go

To walk alone along the roadside. Do not follow. This is best.