Lost, Love

I've written a bunch of sonnets in my life, none of which I've thought was any good. I was reading Hass's "Little Book on Form" last night and thought I'd give the form another chance. What if a sonnet recapitulated the history of the form, however vaguely? Quatrain on forbidden love; quatrain on God, post-volta resolution of the two as the form itself slowly dissolves.


If it is true that we should not have kissed
Because we know how sad life is and cruel
If I should never’ve pressed my fingers to your breast
My silent, protest rage, beloved, well, then to be a fool—
Who could not help but hope God dropped a sign,
Before, befuddlededly, he wandered off,
Forgetfulness, read upon your skin,
Or momentary blindness,—then such a sin
Is just the entrance fee. Love does not last—
We slid into our clothes and closed the door,
Turned on the light, resumed the souls we’d been.
We must have known we would. And yet we were surprised
Like thirsty hikers lost on foreign hills
Who despair to find a stream—and there it is.

A Clever Observation on a Trivial Fact Followed by an Enigmatic Image that Might Be Profound

For Billy Collins

At 60 my mother was no spring chicken
But then a spring chicken is something no one ever is
Not even spring chickens.
It’s only something you can not be
Like so many other things, even things for which we have certain names,
Like certain.
They say he has a certain charm,
By which we indicate that we don’t know what that charm is
Which makes it anything but certain.

I like the idea that we can now throw shade.
Years ago we could only cast it, as we cast a fly rod
Which provides very little shade. Now we can throw it
Like a baseball, which has more surface area,
Though now that I think of it, perhaps we should learn to unfurl shade.

Which brings me back to my mother, in her rocking chair,
Reading this poem
With a certain enigmatic expression.