Sonnet for Staying Friends

When I think of us as something nascent

Or young and unfounded, or newly wrought,

Or virginal (now that’s a funny thought.

Virginal. Young, eager, maybe frightened?

Attempting to find some new untouched spot

And feigning poise or erotic complacence)

I wonder if the text falsifies ends,

Or if we are new hands on some law book.

Wonderfully new. Hands can be drawn or shook

Whenever. And people can let a new

Line be drawn wherever, in sand or soot;

Though that sounds stupid: imagine us years

From now drawing lines in the ground in some

Sandy patch in the middle of everything.

Villanelle: Watchman's Song

New benedictions by which I was blessed

Grew structures and rules, implicit in time,

And counted on fingers, stressed and unstressed.

No ox on the tongue, no sunlight to rest,

No turn of the pages, no thinking sublime,

Just new benedictions; a baby to bless.

Ship’s smoothest wood mocked Leviathan best,

Her coat-foundered floor (one Mariner’s Ryme)

Uncurled my small fingers, stressed and unstressed.

Ein Zeit—a time—Und Geist: a living test,

A lamb bleating sharp at the shearing time,

A father to father; his latter half blessed.

Now I recall my father’s barrel chest,

Vibrations on ear, and rumble-stacked rhyme;

He counted my fingers, stressed and unstressed.

Arching of fable, a glint from the West,

A thunderous march-to and tug-on-the-line

Renews benedictions by which I was blessed:

A count on the fingers, stressed and unstressed.