Haiku Sonnet: Professor

He said music lies
between black beads strung loosely
in a faulty net.
So, what else is new?—
I’ll have to accept the sense
of something I can’t
hear. If, smiling, he
said an abacus can play
a sad song, I’d nod.
Words are notes as well.
Maybe they’ve agreed silence
is logic’s sinew.
Maybe truth’s harmony
hides in open air.

One Year Later

Last week this blog circled the calendar for the first time, reaching its one-year anniversary on March 21st. That’s 295 posts (poems plus essays plus “finds”), 98 paintings and drawings, and 366 haiku (or 6,222 syllables).
It seems crass to reveal the number of visitors—because what do those figures indicate anyway?—and [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Unrequited

Tonight he’s listing
all the times he happened by—
too embarrassed to
arrive. Events were
always in progress, eyes turned
away. He appeared
hoping she’d see him
behind her or over there—
trying to be just
visible. She smiles
in memory as she didn’t
in life. Now she knows
that face is no accident.
It needs to be seen.

Abstracting Abstraction

If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. - Edward Hopper
Last week, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Edward Hopper show. I’ve long admired Hopper’s paintings. His city scenes exude narrative mystery, and even his Gloucester homes and Maine [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Tomorrow’s Army

In my dream, soldiers
line up like wine bottles then
just stand on the shelf.
Their blood unsummoned,
they find time to mellow. Night
inside them—the dark
inside stones—brightens,
and at last they see we’re
all made to ferment.
Miracles that make
us aren’t of our making, so
we do better sitting,
letting the seasons,
not war, call us to ourselves.

Those Letters

A statement students never hear—our disappointments and not our triumphs make us.
In the next few weeks, the seniors at my school will learn colleges they want do not want them. For some, it will be the end of desperate hope they tried not to feel. For others— having already seen themselves [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Know Thyself*

In secret places—
beneath the lining of trunks,
in chemists’ closets,
amid tumbling stones
of a fence through a forest—
are instructions to
see yourself at last.
No one who knows you left them.
They didn’t care who
might give their letters
shape and meaning again, and
you can’t go hunting.
The instant waits in a mind
forever dreaming.
* 

My Vote

Some time ago, I read an article in Slate setting the odds of a single vote influencing an election at 100,000,000 to one; however, if you live in a populous state and you’re voting in a sizable election—like the presidential race—your odds are probably much worse.
Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Trouble Sleeping

Wakened by footsteps,
I find the house still quiet.
The only walking
was through my dream, sound
forming its own chain. The moon’s
curiosity
coats the bedroom in
light that could be imagined,
might be sleep leaking
from beneath covers,
or furniture’s true nature
surfacing at last.
Closing my eyes won’t help now—
night has moved inside.

The First Word

When I was young, I dreamt of inventing an expression that would gain popularity and then—like an oddly marked bill—return to me from a stranger. I was naïve enough to believe that I could come up with something new and naïve enough to imagine saying, “Hey, I invented that” and to have [...]