On Anticipating the First Day of Class (August 13, 2018)

The day before D-Day was like a weight,

A hundred pounds pressing downward, two tons

For each platoon of infantry.   A crate

Of books weighs less, two stones perhaps, and sons

Won't die from lifting books.  Time is fleeting

When times are out of joint.  But clocks spin slow

In the tediousness of peace.  Meeting

A deadline is not like meeting a foe,

And a classroom is not a trench.  We fight

A quieter fight now, paper battle

To stem the tide of ignorance, the night

Of civilization's last death rattle.

"Oh, get over yourself," your wife will say.

"The first day of class is not like D-Day."

On Not Wanting to Write My Last Brief (August 2, 2018)

A week away from work makes people weep

For joy; two weeks will make them run so mad,

They'll beg to work again.  Warm nights they sleep

Beneath a sheet of silk, like old Sinbad,

Luxuriant, a prince among the sheikhs

Of Araby.  Cold nights they sleep in spoons,

Him front to back, her back to front; bed creaks,

Wind howls; and then they dream of other moons,

The yellow moon in desert skies, afloat

In blackest night.  But in the day they toil

From dawn to dusk, though none might think to note

The blood and sweat and tears they spend.  To boil

It down: we live in dreams, and once awake

We die in dread of these the lives we make.

On Once Again Chastising Yourself for Sloth (July 11, 2018)

A week away from writing lines that rhyme

And bounce along – ta-dum, ta dum – the feet

Of "Man at Rest," retired, tan, with time

Enough to do the things he wants, to meet

The challenge, beat the clock, and still fulfill

His fondest dream, that is, a year of verse.

And yet a week slipped by, the hours until

The end of time slipped by.  A man can curse

His own mortality and yet not stir,

Not move from off his chair, inertia's pull

Like weights upon his soul.   He thinks of her,

The one who brought his cup so close to full,

He thought he would not need again to pour.

She deserves more than this.   She deserves more.

On Wasting Another Perfect Day (July 3, 2018)

One perfect day after another comes,

The skies so blue, cool breezes wafting sounds

Of bells across the grass from church, the hums

Of cars along the street making their rounds

From home to work and back from work to home.

That is for others now.   Young men aspire…

To what exactly?  To greatness?   To roam

The world like Knights Templar?  Old men retire,

They learn Latin, read Proust, listen to birds

All day outside beneath a shade, pretend

To write a magnum opus, but the words

They've stored up for so long now won't descend

From mind to pen to paper.   Yet the sun

Still shines, the breeze still blows, the rivers run.

On Learning Latin as One More Distraction (June 29, 2018)

Ablative absolutes are not so hard,

Just keep declensions clearly in your head,

The rest is easy.  In the old schoolyard

The cries of ancient schoolboys, long since dead,

Echo across from wall to wall, rhyme schemes

Of Latin poems known by heart, the whip

Of pedants lashed across their backs.  Time seems

To stand so still or else time seems to skip

Ahead so fast your mind begins to spin.

Dimissis peccatis nostris… that means

Forgive our sins, but you forget that sin

Includes a wandering mind.  In sylvan scenes

Of old a boy might simply know the words

For things — for sky, for grass, for wind, for birds.

On a Thunderstorm in June (June 26, 2018)

The dog is first to hear the thunderstorm;

It builds out west, then rumbles on the way

To eastern skies; he leaps, then whines, his warm

Breath close to master's face, he seems to say,

"Wake up, you fool, the end of time is here!"

But dogs don't think eschatalogically.

They don't know much, just sounds that they must fear,

A scream of lightning off across the sea,

A shadow lurking, rain upon the fen,

A footstep unannounced at the front door,

The master's skin grown cold as death, and then:

His mistress left to feed an aging cur.

A dog is not so different from a man.

Afraid so much, he loves as best he can.

On Good Fortune Coming Just When You Need It (June 22, 2018)

Lucky man!  Oh, you so, so lucky man!

The cliff approached, the end is near, you jump,

Yet – deus ex machina! – you began

To fall only to find you're saved; the "wump"

You expect hitting the ground now sounds soft,

Like an old man's gray head on pillows' down. 

What keeps holding someone like you aloft?

Why should you have such grace?  Around this town

A thousand men deserve more grace than you;

Around the world a million souls await

The intervention of the saints.   It's true

That you are not so bad, so don't berate

Yourself unfairly, yet be ever humble

That you are raised whenever you stumble.

On a Son's Homecoming (June 18, 2018)

The boy home!  The prodigal son returns!

From gothic towers to lannon stone house,

Arriving like he never left, he yearns

Only for milk and cereal.  A mouse

Would make more noise upon first entering,

Yet a day passes, missed sleep is regained,

And suddenly the boy is centering

His days on lost pleasures.   Tuesday it rained,

But Wednesday the sun came out and he ran

The same old route, he played the same old songs,

He drew a sketch in pencil of a man

Like one Rodin once did in stone.  He longs

To roam again, I know; for now, I'm glad.

Happy today, tomorrow I'll be sad.

On Taking the High Road to Taos (June 10, 2018)

The landscape from the window is too sere,

The drop from the side of the road too steep.

The wife will not leave the car or go near

The edge of the overlook, but will keep

Herself away from any risk of harm.

The husband creeps up to the lip and looks

Out over the valley.  The sun is warm

On his face -- New Mexico in June cooks

Like beef on coals; the ground turns red to brown.

He peers over, edging close to the drop;

Beneath the cliff the tops of pines spill down

The slope in waves; below there is a crop

Of some kind that only grows in dry soils.

And in the distance -- there!  -- the farmer toils.

On D-Day (June 6, 2018)

Those men on the beaches lying broken,

Those men crouched above, whispering the rite,

Extreme unction, giving them the token

Of God's love, all they need, the lamp to light

Their way to the undiscovered country…

Cowed by the courage of others, you sit

In the safety of your home, the sundry

Goods of peace surround you, the play of wit

The only contest of your day.   Three score

Ten and four years later, few may recall

The sacrifice; the guns a distant roar,

The men once fallen now no longer fall.

It was a rainy day, the sixth of June,
The men who were so young grew older soon.

On Drinking Wine at Ruby Tap and Listening to Beach Volleyball (June 5, 2018)

A glass of cabernet on a spring day,

Sitting in the open air, river breeze

Wafting up from the park the sounds of play.

The boys tease the girls and then the girls tease

The boys; the volleyball arcs through the sky

With the trajectory of tragedy,

Like the song… ain't no time to wonder why ,

Whoopie!  We're all gonna die.  "The pity,"

He says, "is that it all goes by so fast…

One day you are young, leaping in the air,

Full of vim and vigor, then it is past,

you're old, and a peach is too much to dare."

"No one says 'vim and vigor' anymore,"

His wife sighs.  "Drink your wine, don't be a bore."

On Distractions in Mass (June 4, 2018)

Corpus Christi!   The communion of saints

Requires the communion of us sinners.

Thinking of other things during Mass taints

The real presence of Christ: Sunday dinners

With the family, mental lists for toils

On Monday, the week's tasks, worries to keep

You up at night… the workaday world spoils

Contemplation of the Eucharist… sleep!

(No, no, no… your head should not be nodding…

Listen to father's homily, you fool!)

And yet you think of mowing, of sodding

The bare areas of your lawn, a tool

You might buy later at the hardware store,

To fix the hinges on the bathroom door.

On a Cool Day in June (June 1, 2018)

Not quite summer, the sky is not quite blue,

The flowers not quite lush with mauve or red,

The air still too cool, a degree or two

Below perfection; he can go to bed

Comfortably in the cool of the night,

But he cannot sit outside with a beer

And a good book in the sun; there is light,

But insufficient warmth this time of year. 

Even a fire gives insufficient heat.

All winter long he waits for spring and prays

For warmer days to raise the dead, to greet

Tulips of April mornings, yet June stays

Cool this far north, and winds swoop from the plains,
And the darkening sky in the west brings rains.

On Procrastination (May 31, 2018)

The tick-tick of time, waste of wasted hours,

Awaking at dawn with lists of new things,

Self-improvement projects, the rich flowers

Of a new-made man, but then the day brings

Only the distractions of "news," the old

Breaking stories of a broken new age,

Always the same, always weak, never bold,

The tumescent twitterers' click-this-page

Come-ons.   Who will step back to dream big?

Who will stop, stand still, slow down, save a thought

For the beautiful things?  (Who gives a fig

For the beautiful things?)  The things I sought

Imagined a different, bigger me.

Now I am a procrastinating pea.

On Changing Careers Late in Life (May 30, 2018)

Can you turn from argument to silence,

From standing up to speak out, to fence

With adversaries?  Can you walk the road

From banks and firms and work for pay to load

The heaping store of a life's long learning

Into the minds of youth filled with yearning

For a different life, life not of the mind?

Can you salvage treasure and try to find

The still point at the center of the room?

This is the summum bonum, the bridegroom

Who finally finds his bride.   To wax and wane

But once, then drift and dwindle, still so sane

That when you disappear you feel the rush,

See the point of light fade, hear the last hush.

On Reading Within a Budding Grove (May 29, 2018)

Marcel wrestling with Gilberte… good gracious,

The honesty of Proust!  The will to shame

Dissemblers!  A mind like that, so spacious,

So forgiving of things we dare not name,

So tolerant of sin, so just, so fair,

As if for years he suffered every pain

So later he might understand and care

About the pain of others.  He was sane

While friends and family thought him raving mad.

He was watching, waiting, learning, weeping

For the ugly, the beautiful, the bad

And the good.   At night while she was sleeping,

He was writing.   It takes courage to hold fire,

To hide your truer self behind a liar. 

On Memorial Day (May 28, 2018)

In Flanders Field the British dead were left

To molder in summer's sun.  Red poppies

Grew in earth turned by shells.   Mothers, bereft,

Wept in London.  Paperboys hawked copies

Of the Daily Mail with "YPRES AGAIN!"

Across the head.  The politicians talked.

Boys in knickers still at school dreamed of when

They too might fight the Hun.   John Keats once walked

In fields of flowers listening for a bird

To call him back to something close to peace;

Wan, weakened, waiting for a single word,

To end a single line, he tried to cease

The ceaseless war against the waste of time.

But soldiers know such wars aren't fought in rhyme.

On Sitting on the Porch on a Sunday Morning (May 27, 2018)

The cool of the morning before the heat

Of the day is more a sanctuary

Than the deepest kind of hermit's retreat.

Remove your shoes, you voluptuary,

And feel the cool of the polished brick floor,

Sit still beneath the low, slow-turning fan,

Relax, listen to Louis Armstrong roar,

A song of the self-made man, the whole man:

I see trees of green, red roses… you know

The rest.   A man might riot, rage and roam,

Chasing fame and fortune, becoming beau

To a queen.   Another man stayed at home,

Listening to the leaves as the breeze swirled:

I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

On Thanking My Wife for the Gift of My Daughter on Her Graduation Day (May 26, 2018)

The luck to be in the right place when she

Walked in, at the right time to catch her eye

From across the room.  He charmed her, that "he,"

That younger man, that younger, better "I."

In an instant, that wink, that nod, then talk,

And our talks became a daily blessing.

Who could have known (but God) when she would walk

Across the floor we soon would be guessing

Each other's fondest, deepest, heartfelt dreams,

That we would be each other's saving grace?

Now a quarter century later seems

Only a moment.   That face, that sweet face,

From that the greatest gift I have began:

This beautiful child, this angel, this Anne!

On Contemplating 60 (May 25, 2018)

To contemplate sixty is somewhat sad.

Gray jowls loom, flesh cascading down sad cheeks,

Forehead floating like a fat balloon, mad

Vessel for a mad man's airy thoughts.  Weeks

Might pass, then months, then years, the rest a blur,

The promised ease a rush to easeful death.

Sixty becomes seventy becomes… "Sir,

Can I help you?  Sir, can you catch your breath?

Are you all right?   Would you like to sit down?"

Lord Tennyson once wrote an old man's rhymes:

A man who would not yield, who would not drown,

But sailed to find the undiscovered climes.

"'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,"

Said old Ulysses.  You?   Your flags are furled.

On Beginning Another Quixotic Enterprise (May 24, 2018)

The year of sonnets will pass without note,

"Nor long remembered," as Abe Lincoln said.

Your hope would be the rhyming words you wrote

Might someday be heard, exhumed like the dead

From electronic mausoleums filled

With bits of wisdom.   But no.   You hid your lights

Too long under bushels.   But no.  You killed

Your best self by wasting your days and nights

Clicking on politics, the yin and yang

Of leeches, rent seekers, the right and left

Lickspittles, licking left, then right.  You sang

Of nothing and now you are left bereft,

The anonymous man, the minor man,

Paterfamilias of a small clan.

The Year of the Sonnets

It occurred to me on Wednesday, my fifty-ninth birthday, that the last year before I turned 60 years old ought to be one where I do something entirely quixotic, something so foolish that people will think I've run mad in my dotage.   On the other hand, since it is not in my nature to run mad -- if I have failed in my first six decades, it has almost always been from being too sane, too unwilling to risk any injury, whether physical or financial -- I'm not going to take up skydiving or suddenly cash out the 401k to start bitcoin mining.   So I needed something that would be both silly and safe.

Hence... the Year of the Sonnets.