Love in Other Worlds: A Sonnet

Love in Other Worlds: A Sonnet
Image by Francesco Pitarresi from Pixabay

To write love poems when this world’s a mess
is like, depending on your point of view,
finding jasmine on the moon—an excess
of joy where all is bleak—or dreams of blue
sky at night, of food in famine, oceans
flooding Mars. How much that once was is gone
forever? We lose faith...What devotion
love requires! Dear, on this rock I’ve drawn
a heart, now make it beat, give it sweet blood
to pump and spill, though the stars are bitter
and there’s nothing to eat but long-dry mud;
don’t look down, for Earth’s still there, aglitter,
and when you touch my chest as if to turn
a rusty tap within, she drifts off, spurned.

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Diary

Ages ago I kept a diary in a hand legible to
none but me. I read it on my knees as just-fallen

rain clings to pinecones like wet feathers,
the evening slips into its velvet gown,

and starlight pitter-patters on my head
like drops of gallium. I am thankful

the day is dying, for I have forgotten how
to live. Who wrote those words belongs

to an empire that collapsed under its
own grandiose weight, its high priest

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poetry

Enlightenment

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging
sense that

· 1 min read
poetry

Foul Weather Friend

I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings

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