Sonnet with Mailbox and Machines

                                      —after César Vallejo and Donald Justice

I will die in spring with camellia blooms
strewn on the bluestone path as if they knew …
To say it is to make it so. Justice
and Vallejo understood. Petals sprawled
on gravel like Miami sunbathers,
lying shameless on their dove-gray towels,
not gone but going, as they say, to seed.
The mail truck will stop at the box beyond
the gate, not seeing me in the cool dirt,
the shade of the cedar. Don’t believe them
when they tell you about the blood machines,
the drip. To say it is to make it so.
There will be camellias, and meteors
will be falling, unseen in all the light.

Sonnet with Sniper and Arcade

Meteors fall unseen in all the light.
That’s how it always goes. We drove all day,
stopped at a bar in the foothills, hoping
for an egg and bacon sandwich and beer,
thinking that’s all we wanted. A young kid,
even younger than we were, was playing,
and chords began raining from all directions,
a blitzkrieg, then sniper fire, then a blaze
in snow, burning through the night, and we knew
we’d heard the most phenomenal music
we’d ever hear, in the romantic glow
of an arcade game and a Miller sign:
Bach at a truck stop, passing his cocked hat.
What we think matters is not what matters.

Sonnet with Meteors and Hive

Meteors fall unseen in all the light.
What we think matters is not what matters.
Every word breathes fire on what it praises.
Gloriously to sing about the Word:
Come Monday Come undone Come as you are.
Don’t pretend you know what it will be like.
Even God longed—died—for a human touch.
Resting on the rails of the temple gate,
sweet nothings make the way worth our while.
Not the hive and all its oozing honey,
but the rudder, the jib, the swinging lamp,
the free-range angel caged inside your skull.
She shines without profaning you with light,
glistens with the blood of the fallow deer.