my first sonnet

one day not long ago i was taking a man's order at Fish. his shirt had a pattern of flying ducks on it that i liked, and i told him so. but between the moment that i gave him the compliment and the moment that he thanked me, i realized with a kind of dismay that the ducks on his shirt weren't flying. they were falling, tumbling out of the sky. he affirmed my observation by saying (as if his grin would reveal he had teeth missing, though he had all his teeth): "they're full o buckshot."

this moment inspired my sonnet. because it seemed an unlikely form for its subject, yes, but also because the form itself revealed to me my own deep and abiding hunting instincts.



sonnet full of buckshot


when a rhythm catches i will pluck
it out of thin air. hushfuls will founder
waylaid by the thunderclap, no time to duck
down. and fall through the sky's false bottom, rounder
than the theatrical notion of surprise,
the sudden and transitory expanse
triggered by duplicity in the guise
of a puddle duck, subtly enhanced
by the clarity it lends to the muddy.
i too am happy to wade hip-deep in ooze
for the chance to extract from the suddenly
soft finery of misconstrued music.

my aim is true, my intention to solder
the mat's soft yield to the wrestler's shoulder.





there you have it.

the sonnet as a form has been there all along and i have never filled it. it is like an exquisite chair i have never once sat in. i think i'm finally ready to pull all these lovely forms left behind for me out of the attic and furnish my life with them.