Sonnet 156, The Distances, Second Series (from The Songs Of The Erinnyes, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies by Jay Noya, Brigantium Press)

Sonnet 156

For the eye to thread rain through a cloistering window
Because there are verbena effects to contend with and music
That precedes the dance and is relayed and interpreted
To interrupt space for then comes the thrash of street rain
To layer the wait as it is caught and fragmented and is assembled
As an indictment and accusation even as something else stirs
As a prelude to cold fingers rapping on a lonely man’s heart
And a kneeling man praying and drowned
In a misery the soul alone accepts as its own and wills into shape
Words can’t fix or seize or restrain and shan’t dispose of it
When the throat swells with bitterness and foul swearing
And curses are patterned and boxed and wrapped and a note’s
Written in brittle script and classifying the cleaving properties of love
And arriving at what? because by then the man with specs can’t repeat
Any of it (not a word shall he mumble electing to gawk instead)
With the intransigency of a rancid spinster sitting by a bus window
If only she’d open her mouth when the whipping rain arrives
But she doesn’t part her lips and the rain turns the avenue to ash



© J.Noya 2010