Sonnet: The Sisters

I look at my wrist. The seconds don't stop

their inexorable round, heading south

to six, moving up to twelve, then the drop

again to three, to six, to nine. The plough

of time digs the furrows where we plant seeds

whose futures we sometimes imagine, but

mostly our work is simply our needs,

strong as our hearts before our thread is cut

by Atropos, who thinks the garment's done,

the size is right, every stitch is in place,

so she turns her mind to the yarn that's spun

and sewn that her sisters have made and graced

with luck, strength, hope, maybe love, maybe guile,

weighs it against time, adds it to the pile.

Today, spring is dour--for her. The air's gray,
the budding leaves quiver, then are silent,
more intensely green in this kind of day,
more. . .expectant, somehow, in their quiet.

90 degrees in San Francisco--roses,
eager to open themselves to the sun,
burst into flagrant pink glory--expose
everything, leave nothing undone!

The leafy, shadowed corner by the shed,
the one the sun angles into, reminds
me of fairy tale nooks made of vines, threads,
and pins they find--their ancient design.

The light's the sea the day is drifting through--
lazy swells and clarity, the mind's ease,
the soul's hunger met--each thing glowing, new,
a rich, soft busyness, a garden's peace.

Each morning, now, I come down to a green
world growing greener, sweeter, more intense--
winter strips the world for its months-long dream,
from which it awakes into spring's incense.

The eye brim-full with the sun's golden light
does not belong to time--beyond season,
century, beyond the empire of night,
beyond fear or hope, or ropes of reason.

Sonnet: His Time Upon The Stage

One can live his allotted span of years
numb, laughing from behind bullet-proof glass,
hiding from himself the names of his fears--
strutting, fretting, unreliable, rash.
Ridiculous. I, too, can only shake
my head at the fool who is so afraid
of our one chance at life that his escape
is to stay drugged and think he's got it made.
I was, for too long, a member of that tribe,
playing a part in a play I made up--
unconscious, stupid--easy to describe--
the vanity of the weak, a sad pup.
Too brief? Life lasts long enough to play fool:
your audience sees through you--that's the rule.

The light's the sea the day is drifting through--
lazy swells and clarity, the mind's ease,
the soul's hunger met--each thing glowing, new,
a rich, soft busyness, a garden's peace.