Ruthlessly Pruning My First Sonnet

One interesting assignment in a recent poetry class was to take a poem I've written before and pare it down by focusing on the economy of language.

I'm all for economy of language. As a journalist and editor in my past life, I let hardly any adjective or adverb survive.

But life has changed. At recent readings, I've been captivated by the performance aspect of poetry, less so with classical poetic form.

So I took this opportunity to take the first sonnet I ever wrote... for a girl... in college... when I thought I was so smart... and ruthlessly prune it to reflect my current life... for anyone who might care... right here... when I simply crave relevance and connection.

This is...

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. 

---------

And this is...

Sonnet Unbound

You and I are tides 

under a faithless light. 

 

We rise and fall, 

splash and spill. 

 

Helpless, 

in the mist. 

 

Reckless, 

in our love and hate. 

 

The moon, 

relentless and immutable, 

 

casts indifferent shadows 

on our foolish fate. 

 

 

Poem: 'Ja Cie Kocham'

Mary Baron, 1897-1974

Ja Cie Kocham

When I was a boy,
JFK was president in Washington, DC,
And all the words were Polish in Garfield, New Jersey.

All the words were Polish
As I held my grandmother’s sandpaper hand,
And we walked to Sunday Mass at St. Stan’s.

All the prayers were Polish.
All greetings were Polish on the east side of Lanza Avenue.
Everyone around us, an immigrant.

Returning from church with Babci,
We stop to pick a chicken to slaughter.
She haggles with the butcher in Polish.

At dinner, I devour tender slivers of the chosen chicken,
Mixed in a soup with chunks of rice,
As pots of boiled cabbage simmer on her oven top.

I catch her eye in the changing colors of the kitchen window:
A flickering glow from the outline of a neon bottle
Above the door of the neighborhood liquor store.

Babci knows me, although we don’t speak the same language.
She knows I hate the smell of cabbage.
She knows I won’t, I can’t, complain.

English words were never spoken in Babci’s house.
English words were elitist and foreign.
They confused and intimidated her.

Her child, my mother, spoke English rebelliously when she was young,
Loving all the English words she needed for survival,
Instilling that love in me.

Now I am my mother’s keeeper.
We have both grown old.
My grandmother died long ago.

I sometimes catch Babci’s daughter
staring at ghosts outside her kitchen window.
So I whisper in her ear, although I know she can’t hear me.

I whisper the only three words I remember in Polish.

Thank Yous From Newlyweds to My Grandmother (an unrhymed sonnet)

Mary and Jimmy, wearing a white tux.

He has giant hands; she, a slender waist.

Pat and Bill sincerely appreciate

their world in color, freed from black and white.

Rosalie and Rudy peek playfully,

retreating to their honeymoon cabin.

 
Mary and Hugo, dancing center stage,

hands tightly clasped, casting nervous smiles.

Norma and Emil, wearing Clark Kent glasses.

She has dangerous beauty, kryptonite.

Dolores and Libbie’s getaway car.

She stole his heart; he has a dark secret.

Florence and Uncle Charlie, now both dead.
When my aunt smiled, she made the bright world dim.