Sonnet #251

The vine is handed down from masters,
The methods are more modern, digital tools
An electric range, clean sugar, free of bone...

Wait until the halfturned grape, grackles’ laughter
In the leaves, then pick them tart like fools
To soon to eat, too soon for wine, leave none
Behind. Okay, let’s clean them up, for starters
Knock the spiders out of them, be not cruel
They are good friends, help them back home

And they’ll help the vine next year, the clusters
Must be gleaned, of rot and ruin and insectivores
At last crush, mill and now we’re finally at step one

measure out the sweetness, start the fire, pure the jars
The work more the vine’s, not ours: a sun, long green arms

Sonnet #250

This is why we fight: Because the happi-
ness that we were promised comes in fits
and spurts at best and in between the bits
of time we fill with toil and nothing, lacking
joy while striving for it, there is no contentment;

The rose will bloom in summer, seasons turn
and push and push as miser's advisory burns
the forest down to weeds, empties night music
where the toads are silent, crickets gone, the bird
bones decay in falling nests, where void breaks
no song of memory, the absence of life is a word
that forgets to speak itself, a field of rocks
that forget how to be awash with trees and flowers
No echo of them, either; this is why we fight.

Sonnet #249

The skin of snakes resembles corpses eaten hollow
Upon this open grass, I wonder why she chose to shed
Where no shelter from the sky is, nothing's hid
She broke the scales, and peeled herself anew
Abandoned this particolored cape and pushed afield
On open ground, a busy road, hawks in all seasons
Wild dogs run in the twilight, filthy and mean
The coyotes sneak in, too: in darkness all reveals
The skin of snakes betrays the snakes, extends
Their territories, shining brighter than scat
A dazzling display upon the grass, a jeweled end
A brazen scent for the sniffers, a warning to cats
and all creatures, rattlesnakes roam this bend
Devour themselves hollow, from the inside-out

Sonnet #248

Cicada songs of summer, come to me,
Where life drones on despite the heat
I watch a tiny insect sing above a street
In evening twilight, starlight breaking free
A galaxy around us, an infinite expanse
And this precarious insect's tiny love song
He was born in soil, died in soil, rose strong
from death to sing of life and to dance
Behind them always death, the shells,
a life in transformations come; how
weak we were, we ring our churchbells
Fall in water, say we're transformed now
And transformed again as our husks all fell
We sing among the stars, someday: we know.