Haiku Sonnet: Waiting for You

Afternoon dwindles:
the sky gathers birds flying
to some unseen rest,
the evening sun
amasses on surfaces
like condensation,
as if the inner
light of objects collected
like dew. A life so
infused—remembered,
revealed—would drown desire
at last. It can’t last—
doors open to love’s return,
the body of night.

Haiku Sonnet: Teaching a Lovesong

 *
I’ve said to myself:
Listen, if you tear teaching
“Prufrock,” maybe you
should dare, maybe they
should hear you stop counting lines
to say how Prufrock
feels.  How does he feel?
Scuttling claws won’t fit through sleeves,
And those mermaids, they
are someone else’s
fetish.  I wait for the bell
sending them elsewhere.
Birds collect outside windows.
Every one looks in.
*T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred [...]

13 Ways of Looking at Snow*

I.
Back to the window
I untangled shadows, guessing
snowy branches were
arthritic fingers
knuckled by age and frozen
mid-reach.
II.
Where he’d shoveled snow
the sidewalk looked like feathers,
his motion still there
in the sweep of wings.
III.
Snow falling two ways:
as a shower of stars or
as all the heavens
falling together.
IV.
Snow—verb and noun, snow
drifting and settling.
V.
A day in the sun
and snow sags—the fanciful
swans of the morning
bent [...]

Haiku Sonnet: I Remember Winter

I remember winter
now that it’s here—the next word
in a song, a plea
for love you forget
until a character speaks.
Now I remember—
outside this window,
one leaf clung all winter. Wind
set it fluttering
like a hummingbird.
Its sociable flicker was
like life. One day
it flew away, and I thought—
it wouldn’t ever come back.

Haiku Sonnet: Dreaming of Flight

The airport’s gates are
just for departures. Faces
resign to leave, hands
lifting half aloft
in sleepy goodbye. No one
takes belongings or
notes destinations.
Numbers are abstract again,
and, besides, the few
left behind wait to
follow. We kiss and hug, our
habits harder to
give up, but skies open and
invite us at last.

Haiku Sonnet: A Dead Sturnus Vulgaris*

Ants clot passages
into his breast, curtaining
the rooms inside and
the secrets of their
devoted emissary.
One eye faces up,
its focus broken,
stuck on distance. His oiled coat
hides spots too dim to
read in flight—who would
ever be this near?—but some
royalty hangs on
that—even in death—
won’t quite let us know him.
*Common Name: European Starling