221
Sonnets From Other Lives: Will & Helen

Outside the storm is wilding on as though
it intends to rip the world apart.
They lost power half an hour ago.
Beyond the candle glow the house is dark.
Will & Helen sit together reading;
he Raymond Carver, she Joyce Carole Oates.
--Love—he asks her—do you feel like eating?
She thumbs her place & answers—I don’t know…
I could warm some chili on the fire .
–I’ll dig a pot out of the camping gear—
he says rising slowly. He is tired
all the time after his stroke. --Oh dear—
he thinks as a wave of vertigo
reminds him of mortality then goes.

220
Sonnets From Other Lives: Dharma Bums

I think about the vultures in Bolinas
roosting in the eucalyptus trees.
We’d slept with only sleeping bags between us
& the cold ground of the cemetery. We
dug it. –We’re not dead yet! We called, laughing
as we rolled our bindles up & went
into town for breakfast. –We’re just passing
through. That month that summer then we spent
hitch hiking all up & down the coast.
Herds of hippie hobos on the road
trying to live free a while. Now most
of us—the one’s that I still know
have made some kind of truce with middle age
& for now the vultures will just have to wait.

219
Sonnets From Other Lives: Rudy

When I was a kid at Christmastime
I was a junkie for The Christmas Spirit.
I’d lie under the tree as Silent Night
played on the stereo. I had to hear it
every Christmas Eve just before bed.
I’d lay longing like a soldier overseas
for a Christmas Past or something that I’d read,
about somewhere or more likely seen
on those Christmas Special television shows.
Now, lurching through these crowded big box stores
with their atrocious Christmas Muzak, I don’t know—
I’m not feeling it. It doesn’t work for me.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

218
Sonnets From Other Lives: Miranda

This night is meant for staring at the moon
through silent grey clouds scudding ‘cross the sky.
Miranda intends to go back in soon,
but for now she’s standing hypnotized
by that bright pearl waxing gibbous in
the purple blackness high above her yard.
Honestly she knows she should begin
fixing the kids’ dinner, but it’s hard
to drop a perfect moment for her right
now. The kids are happily watching T.V.
Miranda & her moon will share this night
for a few more moments & then she
will go inside & back to motherhood.
But right now this bright quietude feels good.

217
Sonnets From Other Lives: Morgana

Distant thunder rumbles. It seems closer
than the previous murmured suggestions
of impending storm. Morgana knows her
home is well secured, but the oppression
of a falling barometric pressure
& the grey green pallor of the evening sky--
though strange & lovely-- does mildly distress her
enough to inventory the supplies
stowed securely down in the root cellar.
She puts on Janacek’s Sinfonietta
to bravely welcome in the donnerwetter,
stokes a the fire aflame, then goes to get a
cup of coffee from the kitchen right
before the sky explodes in blue-white light.

216
Sonnets From Other Lives: Lute

Dry leaves rustle, imitating footsteps.
Chinook wind whispering conspiracies
that in his mind begin making weird sense…
Intelligence or stochasticity?
Mare said the stars had had it in for him.
His mother’s version was all sin & wages.
Whatever. All of the documentation
he’d seen thus far while pouring through the pages
of way too many books brought him to this:
People can imagine anything
& put it into writing. Did he miss
his warm & fuzzy certitude & thinking
that everything was part of The Great Plan?
Whatever. I mean hey, shit happens man.