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 price of April is a day like this: into-your-bones wettish, chilly, and gray, the pale green leaves smoky, the flowers' tints dark--the day has the feel of mild dismay.
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.
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