Planting Time: An Ozarks Spring (A Sonnet)

'Tis Spring, and dogwood days are finally here
When sunlight drips into the shady hollow,
And sweat runs underneath the farmer's collar;
Then, while young rascals fret with mortal fear
That rain will make the sunlight disappear
They try to flee their elders' looks askance
The which they know could snare them with a glance
To digging in the beds. A strange idea!

But though the days of Spring are heavy-laden
With unrewarding, long-abiding toil,
Still children in the streams are gaily wading
And skinny-dipping in the muddy pool.
And who would want, until the lights are fading,
To go a-digging taters in the soil?

Strange Vows (A Sonnet)

To look at you, it seems a cruel waste
That you have almost vowed to live apart
And from my pleas withdrawn a cloistered heart.
And this, not for the sake of staying chaste,
For we both know that you have never placed
Your piety in vessels quite so pure.
Instead, because, you say, love is unsure,
Unwieldy for ambition, full of haste
Impractical for one who seeks to climb
The farther summits of her own success.
How strange is this far lofty hermitage
Where contemplating mammon fills your time
And evanescent things, built to excess
Erect a convent shrine of sacrilege.

Springtime (A Sonnet)

Spring days and summer hearts are all in bloom
As we half-rush to quit our cluttered burrow
Like claustrophobes leaving a narrow room;
Outdoors, we open up the hopeful furrow
To make space for the soon-nutritious seed,
Forcing its way to sunlight through black earth.
It seems that freedom is a vital need
For living things to grow from obscure birth. 
And so, our beds, too seldom plowed with leisure,
Are overgrown, and practicalities
Keep love from ripening to lasting pleasure--
For harvests only grow when we're at ease.
 And in our hearts, which have so long lain fallow,
 We've left the seed of love a place too shallow.

Split Personality (A Sonnet)

Sometimes, for lack of seeing you, I dream
That you do not really exist at all,
And when we text all day, I only seem
To share with you my lofty thoughts and small.
Perhaps to you, the other side of me,
I am just solipsistically confessing--
A fairer double personality
Than I have heard of anyone possessing.
And these strange thoughts prompt me to realize
How such close friendships are so rarely found
That they one's life can better summarize
Than eulogies once he is in the ground.
So this Narcissus never runs away
From Echo's voice, always my strength and stay.

Love's Art (A Sonnet)

If just one touch from you can kindle fire
Within my cooling heart, imagine then
How much a thousand more might stoke desire,
Lit by the phosphorus of skin on skin.
And if your laugh seems like a melody
Blown  by the wind into my waiting ear
Then what a song our sighs of love might be
When joined in chorus for the stars to hear;
And if to represent your silhouette,
A single artist could not meet the task,
Then think how many artists would regret
The charge to paint your figure without mask.
-Such beauty, then, we hold back from the world,
-Till intertwined our passion is unfurled.

Dangerous Memories (A Sonnet)

The memories of you still linger on,
A morning after bliss, but sans the joy
Of seeing you. I only wish the dawn
Rose on us both, and I were still the boy
That you could not resist. But I am not
The man-barely a man--who cautiously
With kisses and frightened caresses bought
Some rest from conscience. I ungratefully
Walked out on us, on happiness and love,
 As though someday I could come back to you--
The goddess of my guilt--whom years remove
From hope, and all my later lovers rue.
  But if, though all the world should hinder me,
  You asked, I'd be yours unreservedly.

Fragment from High School (A Sonnet)

The first four lines of this sonnet were written in high school. Unfortunately, I threw away my book of sonnets from back then, and I can't, for the life of me, remember the rest of the poem. So, I attempted to reconstruct the poem's theme and finish what I knew. Here it is:

My lady's bosom rose is midnight black,
Its petals brush her cheek as though a pall
For her were gathered from a dying track
Of roses when the leaves whither and fall;
And I beside her bier pretend to mourn
So without company to keep the rite
Of worshipping my goddess, so much torn
Between being bereaved or acolyte;
And next to this unconsecrated fane,
On whose altar her fairest limbs are laid--
No more pale in death than life--in vain
Are libations of tears for prayers unpaid.
   For only now Persephone's embrace
   Has cast aside my fear to ask her grace.