Four Sonnets (revised, with notes)

Four Sonnets
by J. Dean Randall


THE DRIVING LIFE

The man is walking downtown sidewalks—gray,
with morning light beneath his feet like stones
leading him onward. See his high cheekbones
and swift, determined step? He knows which way
he’s going. Driving in my car, I say,
“My God,” and think how hard to be alone,
to have no one to talk to, family gone,
my friends back home forgotten, worlds away.

There’s never been an easy way to touch
the people in my life. I pass them by,
pedestrians along the lonely road.
I roll the window down—I can’t say why
I won’t slow up, won’t give, won’t ask too much.
The light is green, and speed my only mode.



SONNET FOR THE PAST

Old friends take root in verisimilitude:
I see them stand by roadside cafeterias,
waiting. Cara always makes them wait,
her sugar stops and restroom breaks. In dreams
I see them laughing down the road without
me. Springfield, Cleveland pass behind; Columbus
stinks only memory. In Pittsburgh I’ll catch
up. I know I’ll find them roaring, card-
playing, making spectacle. We’ll be young
again, like children whirling dervishes
in public places, fingers feathered out
and reaching forward. Reaching future’s here.
Now that it’s come we can’t go back. Our children
sleep in seven states of difference.



NÜCHTERNE BEICHTE

Through window blinds I see death creep
toward me—white like bleached-out bones.
Soot-black against the sky, branches reach, long
bare fingers scorched by winds. Infernal teeth
click: all is afterlife.  No lazy breaths
nor pointless days. Death’s excuse is stolen
by dream. I see my choices chip the stones,
erode and etch with acid. Sin confessed
and thought repressed blow shadows through the nights,
when waking—a disturbed corpus ashamed—
my body sweats for grace. Those inner groans
taste sharp, the heart rubbed numb on lying, blame,
cold treachery. Black has been gray; my white,
that deathbed gray—Gott rette!—of rotting skin.


Notes:
1. "NÜCHTERNE BEICHTE" is German for "sober confession."
2. "Gott rette" is German for "God save (me)."



My MISER EXCUSATIO

I make it when I deny my daughters
a little sip of water, a drop of blood
or tiny nip of my flesh. I’m stopped up:
that brown-ringed toilet, the house I remember.
I swing the bathroom door to creep outside
their hungry looks, my face in the mirror.

I no longer blame parents; they don’t see
how little they leave us with. They think
they’ve given a fortune by high school.
How much more could they give to us
than their parents gave to them? How much?

We don’t remember rumpled backstreets
we've left, beggars searching the silence
of trash cans, bending to empty sound.


Note: MISER EXCUSATIO is Latin (hopefully) for "miserable excuse."