Petrarchan Winter Sonnet
The air nips the darkness with peppermint teeth
while steam from an engine begins to rise.
Silence joins Quiet in musical reprise
of fallen orange and goldenrod leaf,
now turned into spirits like funeral wreath,
descending on the city, announcing demise,
intending to block out all shape with its guise,
and to freeze-up the life-line that lays low beneath.
White fire soon covers each pore of the skin:
from trees baring ice blossoms and frozen red blood,
to squared shining mountains; the fire moves on,
seemingly innocent and cleansed of all sin,
yet captive is city, lake, mire, and mud-
and all that was living has died or has gone.
Spring Sonnet
The harsh winter wind still chills the thaw creek,
but light in the air is the scent of the seas.
Death falls away with the click of the beak,
and green shoot explode into swarms of new bees.
The shadows of daylife seem sullen and sharp,
but the sharper the shadow, the longer the light,
with night stored away under heavenly tarp,
barred with beanstalk tangled in fight.
The wet earth lays dampened by celestial tears,
but May blooms from April in flowering hill;
budding round blossoms, come from the seed, rears
flower silk petals and piston lace frill.
Lamb in the meadow, star in the night,
death to rebirth and darkness to light.
