sw00034usabys-13.feb.sonnets.3of25

3 of 25                                               

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (32-46)

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February: Year-day 32

When a soft rain in a rolling wind's whim
stops my eyes, I picture grassy hills, dew
shivering the pores of my washed-out skin,
the peace a slightly curved thing holds, & you:
woman who is to keep my compass true;
& you: man of my fantasies, kind, thin:
& me: tilted, torn, sniveling a blue
fit, choosing neither you, nor me, nor him.

A heliotrope's effects on the sun
couldn't be more devastating, its stare
peaking that fire's curiosity till
at midday fear takes over, makes it run
from that eye as rapidly as it dared
to toward/ and return tomorrow/ until.

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February: Year-day 33
(#2 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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February: Year-day 34

I love the sonnet, so blustery free,
laughing in its chains, strong in its voice full
of icicles, steam, crocodile eggs, me,
voluptuous, concerned, impregnable,
expecting visits from monsters, roots, gods,
terrible in their urgencies, cold tides
harrowing boats, docks, doctrinal frail clods,
enterers of exits: we: race of prides.

Such contrivances we envision, putting
one over on ourselves every time, yet
nimbly enough for our limited view,
not needing true perfection, faultless footing,
even if we don't let rats/insects get
tomorrow.  I hate the sonnet.  Don't you?

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February: Year-day 35

"Nobody's gonna save us from us but us."
Not even an angel or a sauceroid.
So there's no sense in our stringing a fuss
because we're ridiculed and unemployed
or conning our way to the tippy-top
of a "good life" dream.  Spirits that are blacker
than any soot or any skin, that stop
love, won't rescue us no matter the lacquer.

Unless there is a shining from within,
we may as well shift our Cad's into passes
and stuff our green in our ears.  Unless
there's a warmth/ that's death to what's/ well called sin,
perhaps we'd best/ drown in/ pools of molasses,
whose wants just as surely are a sweet mess.

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February: Year-day 36

Honesty in the sequin snow, the cold,
brings corn on a snowmobile to feed deer,
and trails the deer walk on, and care, to hold
what in season he'll kill.  Somewhere, in fear
andtrembling, sometime, I also may, bugged
too long by images out of my past--
we all have been--to avoid being hugged
by the one with whom love will deepest last.

What love I give and am givenis good,
but not enough.  If there really is one
I can happily love, I'd like to know,
but--I perceive I am a complex wood,
needing to share with several kinds of sun.
Am I sad?  Am I a fool?  Maybe so.

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February: Year-day 37

Melancholy, what a black horse you are,
carrying me now to lands without light
where I'm more like shadows caught in a jar
than a being who bleeds, whose dreams are bright,
who for all his sadnesses learned to fly!
Stallion, don't so lead me to more regrets.
I'm in rags already from more than I
could rein through/ when we crossed/ your briared lets.

If my flesh and bones were to disappear
entire, and I truly became that dark
I feel I am, how could I take it, horse,
black, black horse; how could I handle the fear
when you, the world, I/ are but shades apart,
substanceless, in the curled void of remorse.

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February: Year-day 38
(#3 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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February: Year-day 39

Listening to Ron's invisible guitar
and Mark's laughter as he bruises the wind,
no wonder I wonder whose dreams we are
where the crowds have thickened, the crowds have thinned.
No wonder kings in their perma-press suits
have nothing to do with people in rags
as the poets playing their lyres and lutes
look absently at the costs of their tags.

No wonder we wonder wonder through tears
while winds roll & whisp and whistle their songs
and the various guitars talk and chime
to the voids in our stomachs brought by years
too easily stuffed with "impossible" wrongs
that have slashed, jumbled, and corroded time.

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February: Year-day 40

Whim is the master of youth; order, age.
Both of which are present in works of art.
One, of the intuitions of the sage;
the other, of the leapings of the heart.

The coroner's report let no one doubt
the creature we had captured truly died,
but as we smile it streaks again about,
mystifying the kettled countryside.

So, yes, my camera catches charmed views
of mermaid wheat swimming golden, of guards
changing at Arlington beneath the dome
of South Bend's Notre Dame, of the white hues
of Niagara through Schroeder Hall; of yards,
especially the one/ surrounding home.

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February: Year-day 41

Save the universe.  Replace Man.  The things
of this world!  How they move us! make us them!
my vanto be wagon, my pendants, rings!
And who knows who or how or what could stem
this power; who knows how or what or who
Man should be replaced by.  Things of this Earth!
"Dilemma": our real name for sure, to do
with as we wish, hope, must/ from before birth.

Do I talk too sadly?  Give me your hand.
It only takes one to destroy us, and,
one only to keep us alive.  For all
our insignificance, through air and land
and sea, we are significant who stand/
who've not forgotten/ we once had to crawl.

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February: Year-day 42

Flick.  Today is the day we celebrate
the birth of the man whose thirst witnessed light
electrified in a glass bulb, whose great
intrepid perseverance lit the night
for good, more perfectly than candles, whose
relentless genius heard a sound machine
lift voices from spinning, needled discs, whose
insight flashed to images/ on a screen.

That such amazing beauties should have grown
where we must recognize them as our own
are blessings to hold even as they run,
even as they fly past where they have flown,
even as they enter the charged unknown
to use so as to bless/ Tom/ Edison.

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February: Year-day 43

Tall and ascetic, with a screechy voice,
striding out of Illinois--who'd hate, spare:
he chose his wife as if he had no choice;
he chooses words with empathetic flair.

Once by a soldier with a fatal wound
he sat, and wrote to his mother for him,
and talked, and listened, and, gently attuned,
stayed for his comfort at his young life's brim.

So, now, in that house back in Illinois,
he remains for our comfort to the brims
of our lives, knowing pain and knowing joy,
and our Bicentennial moans and hymns;
now, through those words/ he/ was blessed to deploy
to bless our troubled zeitgeist/ oddly swims.

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February: Year-day 44

A time for quiet and simplicity.
You and I on a long summer's walk.  You,
and I, passing under a maple tree,
kissing, breezes bandying in the blue;
sparrows, grackles, robins, swallows, and doves,
like visitors from foreign nations, come
to a sort of resort to know their loves;
you, and I, opening, more than the sum.

In the stream, a flower, living, dead, sails
through our memories, here, there, catching fire,
breaking old incidents out of their jails,
renewing each, like a phoenix from its pyre
of unrecognition, show us what fails
fails not with the right touch of fate, desire.

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February: Year-day 45

Happy Valentine's, if you wish.  The sky
is: fair and breezy.  The graying snow changes
and disappears, unable to/ feel why.
Near Eden, a sharp-shinned hawk rearranges
oursoft perceptions as we travel home
in our Big Sky Blue Volare: to visit
our parents and bus bumMark,who would roam
the world.  Isn't this Valentine exquisite?

Why, even the dove that--on our way back
to West Bend--was really a sparrow hawk/
puts diamond light here.  I, too, would attack
and be brilliant, an "evil" cupid, stalk
the hearts of strangers to assuage my lack
of/ contentment, killing with: more than talk.

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February: Year-day 46

Across Wayne Road, steel wheels: kids on their skates.
On this side, for most of the afternoon,
four girls play, bug, before they pull up stakes
and I'm under cover, too late, too soon.

Some want to fly kites!  How 'bout a balloon?
A daydream or a nightdream is all it takes.
Have you ever heard the cry of a loon?
If these verses aren't mine, let them be Kate's.

Or yours, perhaps.  This language isn't mine
alone.  So the words appearing here, line
by line, are born from my gray.  When God cleans
His gray-on-gray carpet tomorrow, Joe,
we'll all be treated to the dustball snow
and the thunderstorm.  Come.  Enjoy our scenes.
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Brian A. J. Salchert