Poems/images by Bob Varettoni, posted while staying at home on Shakespeare Day, 2020
Sonnet 1
There's something in the air, or so they say.
It's certainly not magic or the heat.
It's just the moon, white-full and young -- the way,
like water, people splash and spill beneath.
And you and I remind me of the tides.
We hate and love; we rise and fall. It scares
me that I don't know why or that I find
no fault in us, just something in the air.
So still above us rests the moon, content
and seemingly unmoved. It doesn't hate
or love; it doesn't care -- without relent,
without a passing judgment of our fate.
The moonlight falls like smoke between the mist.
What fools we are compared to such as this.
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Sonnet 2
Adam was a madman; and Paradise,
a fraud. In only this do I believe:
the rhythm of your constancy. Oh Christ,
your eyes alone can prove infinity.
It is your love that has unraveled all.
You haunt my sleep. One moment, I balance
with stars beneath my feet. The next, I fall
from you, toward earth -- my dream, a graceless dance.
Before I land, my senses gain control.
Awake, alone, I fear the rustling sound
of insubstantial leaves, like wind-swept souls.
My heart (alive or dead?) seems strangely bound.
This is the slow, uneven beat of Hell:
I have loved you always, but never well.
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Sonnet 3
(11 Roses for N)
Alas, alack, I have to disagree
with Shakespeare: my love is rare -- her hair red,
like an Irish setter's, and her eyes green,
the envy of the cat beneath my bed.
I see, in her reflective gaze, nine lives --
defying death (despite devout clichés),
perchance to live forever in this rhyme.
Her form belies my unpoetic ways.
If God's Own eye is something like the sun,
then true love is a flower, I propose.
And my love is a dozen, minus one.
Imperfectly inscrutable: one rose,
one rose, one rose, one rose, one rose, one rose,
one rose, one rose, one rose, one rose, one rose.
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Sonnet 4
A never-ending whisper in my dreams
belies my vane attempts at normalcy --
fluttering wings or muffled, distant screams.
Intimate shades of tone, the source unseen.
And yet, this is no disembodied sound.
I recognize some element of pain.
I sense an urgency the darkness shrouds --
an outstretched arm, perhaps… It's you again.
I almost feel your breath upon my face.
I almost see your form beside my bed.
At dawn I find this ghost has been erased,
and wonder fills my silent hours instead.
What alchemy has turned our love to fear?
What god is this that only I can hear?
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Sonnet 5
I have encased my soul in tempered glass,
displayed it on the mantel in our home.
The frame collects the dust beside a vase
of silk flowers embed in Styrofoam.
Beneath this centerpiece, a hungry fire,
timer-controlled, heats wood that doesn't burn.
The warmth is real, and I am safe. Desire
consumed, I wait alone for love's return.
Then in you walk... Alarms trip. Cats take flight
and lose several lives. A fake church bell sounds.
You flip the light. Night is day; day is night.
Hamlet, without doubt; Ophelia, undrowned.
My kingdom would be bound in a nutshell,
if not for you: our lives, suburban hell.
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