sw00037usabys-14.mar.sonnets.6of25

6 of 25                                               

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (78-91)

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March: Year-day 78

What once was clear is clear no more, yet shall
be clear and unclear again, rising up
and falling down, now dark, now light.  A shell
which holds the sounds of waves, yet not, holds us.

You come to me; I, you: each into each,
wishing to be as two transparencies,
films of substance in intermingling reach;
willing/ only to give/ in slow degrees.

In our hearts: dunes, mountains, rivers, old skies
revolve, and birds, through the eyes of gazelles.

In our skins: words of spies and counterspies
dissolve, and laughs, with the ringing of bells.

In our minds: every dream that mystifies
or solves/ chases us from (or into) hells.

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March: Year-day 79

St. Joseph the Worker's Day, and the swallows,
ensconced again at Capistrano, we,
forced to see our reasons are/ full of hollows
for the trillionth time, mordantly agree
when a letter from an insurance rep
cites me liable for an accident
I never had, and sends us out-of-step
as that sold orange van in Beaver Dam sent.

High on a mountain or skyscraper, much
can be logically fixed on clear days,
though not all, and certainly not all ways.

And on clouded days or in caves and such,
little, if anything, with reason, stays,
hiding and changing as models' toupees.

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March: Year-day 80

Guilty?  Oh yes, we all are: in this; in that:
railing against pollutions of water, air,
land/ while ignoring where our selves are at,
sickened by fear and hate and lack of care,
and alcohol and nicotine and hash
and marijuana and the dust of death's
angels, and vallium and stolen cash
and gambling--all/ impoverishments of breaths.

Not taking time for proper exercise
is one of the pollutions I allow.
You?  Prostitution?  We're so worldly, wise.
If ever once we truly gathered how
our furious desires pluck out the eyes
of our weak, endless spirits, we'd change: now.

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March: Year-day 81

Gods o of laughter, of sorrow, your voices
here we hear, rolling across this round mountain
with the cool fog from the sea, the old choices,
the old commands.  Goddesses o of fountains,
of fires, your changing shapes we see, escaping
from earth with the dreams of sleep, the old dances,
the old paralyses.  Dressing, undressing,
obeying, rebelling, we stake our chances.

Yet verses we approve, however rough,
however ragged, obstacled, should be
somehow acceptable to those concerned,
should follow the curves of feelings enough/
they both enclose & magically free
that space and time we've honorably/ earned.

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March: Year-day 82
                                 (for Sandy Troedel)

Kumquats and boysenberries and the edges
of love.  If who I am is less than who
I might have been, less than you, clouds and hedges
still scare and please us both.  And as I grew,
you grew too; and as I grow, you, as bright
and frail as shafts of wheat, as today's breeze,
each to her own fullness.  So, though wrong, right,
or neither, we can smile and hug with ease.

That is why, mom, this afternoon, I smear
our bland white bread with exotic preserves
and chant incantations to frighten fear
from the gray, the bush, to compose our nerves.
Come, mom.  Come sit. Come play, come talk, come hear.
Oh! how from bark and pane that robin swerves!

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March: Year-day 83

We are strange: mammals of sleek consciousness
veined with darknesses, irised with light, damp
as a root cellar in our bones/ but less
warm, flowy as a gown, stuck as a stamp
carefully placed so whatever it is
it's stuck to is sure to get where it should,
tired as an arthritic dog poised to whizz
through flamed hoops, sharp as an ax/ killing wood.

Confide in us; sooner or later we'll
be sure to let everything out: inks
from their pens, bulbs from their sockets, decay
from their teeth, just as/ we allow a heel/
out for a walk, sly (and obvious) winks/
out for approval, seeds out/ for a jay.

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March: Year-day 84

Again it comes, close, riding the prevailing
westerlies, crow presence, hard to believe,
huge as a house, dreamless, caught in a wailing
that joins, yet/ mocks ours.  What butterflies grieve
but the dead leaves, this morning's wind so strong
we can see it do as yesterday, drive
an empty box near perfectly along
the steep curve to our lot, passing alive?

So Janet Gilles Araoka, away
in Japan mothering two boys, returns
from that confusion into ours, and we--
not at all expecting she'd come/ to stay,
or come so soon, or, as she has--bring ferns,
and bonsai yews, and roses, and a plea.

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March: Year-day 85

The problem with death is it stops the voice,
but not the artist's, the maker of light;
the fires in him are so limned they/ daze night,
Tiresias him in the realms of choice
in his awareness of his place and others'
as they speak to the edge of his last word
inthe manner in which he is best heard,
he with his/ starred fathers, and sons, and brothers.

The fern in the mirror, droopy yet strong,
sending with no visible pause arced shoots
through the stodgy air (in this bedroom), rates
a double of praise for its green-rayed song
as, when, expectantly, flared from their roots,
Earth's visionaries rise: to end Man's dates.

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March: Year-day 86

Thank you, Harold Bloom; A Map of Misreading
springs my bones, freshens my blood, strengthens me,
forcing me to struggle with thoughts exceeding
my extended abilities to see
until I have met them over and over.
Nothing is better for a lazy spirit,
However sweet/ resting/ in stingless clover,
than to enter theory, and never fear it.

Milton in England--where did Shakespeare go?--
Emerson in my United States: seeds
from which more seeds still darkly form and grow,
belated as we are, our hopes and needs
most difficult to fill, and fulfill, so
beset with anxieties where/ light bleeds.

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March: Year-day 87

Sleep: the body's balm, or so one's led to think:
the shadow-time rejuvenation comes;
those moments highly active brains can sink
from their jittery waves, buzzes and hums,
draw inward all their energies, for needs
that in their daytime states cannot be met
but merely, sometimes, recognized as seeds
whose potencies will sprout and blossom; yet

require darkness and quiet for their best/
development.  Eight hours today.  Eight hours
I find I quail to admit, in my quest
(however foolish) for eternal flowers,
are not a waste; that by denying rest
of such an order/ I might strain our powers.

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March: Year-day 88

Up from the left, ahead, a pickup pulling
a boat approaches the freeway, disturbs
my being, primal lakes/forests/times bulling
to awarenesses, nouns becoming verbs;
then recollections of Chicago: yards
& yards of people from the Tri-State seen
rushing to unite, bless polar regards,
show how airiness replaces the screen

consciouness stood when insights manifest
archetypes, and time collapses, & places,
and one's insignificance radiates
with one's significance so that the jest
of the world, the glory--we; all our faces--
dances, alive with gratitude; elates.

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March: Year-day 89

Such darknesses, such searing lights, Lord, jam
my simple attempts to see these last few days.
It's almost as if from not enoughpraise
(or too much) I could forget who Iam,
what little of me I have a grasp of;
that amidst those changes within, without,
my rankled mind drifts about and about,
trembling, between the ports of hate and love.

Maybe so.  Maybe always so.  Whatever,
I need You now to walk with me across
the hilly fields and through the fallen branches
in the ice-stript woods, and along the clever
alleys and streets of this chill sense of loss
I live with, and its plethora of chances.

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March: Year-day 90

The stubby tough potentate shouts and drums,
swatting the wind with the back of his hand,
throned where the Lake Michigan thumbnail comes
to its inside top in the promised land;
and all the king's horses gallop and ney,
gathering the votes at the polling booths,
and somewhere stuffed on the dark side of day
jesters are glowering with strips of truths.

Yet clearly this long-lived limerick king
limericks his peasants and knights quite well
for all that/ in his limerick-exciting
manner.  His realm does thrive!  So one who'll bring
his power to put down those who would spell
"liberty" elsewise/ may/ not be inviting. . . .

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March: Year-day 91

Cry out, my spirit says, cry out to God,
or The Supreme Being, The Primal Rune;
the world gives but a condescending nod,
hearing the strange inflections of your tune.

Cry, though it only does you/ any good,
keeps death from your bones, each day on the run,
helps them to swerve precisely when they should
yet doesn't do/ what you'd rather undone.

Rabbit, forever, in fear of the wolves,
hummingbird having to cross a great gulf,
man, different, on the side of the small,

cry, though it hurts, as if trampled by hooves;
do as you do, though it isn't enough;
pray for those moments that will better all.
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Brian A. J. Salchert