My Generation Waits
They do not call us Boomers, born too late to wear that name, and Generation X we’re not having slipped into life a bit too …
The Calms of Capricorn
Only five degrees to the north or south, shifted just slightly from this present course (here where the still air hangs in the mouth and …
When history’s sad lessons fail
When history’s sad lessons fail to find their place in memory’s halls and social constructs name their grail progress alone, foundations fall. Progress to where, …

Tag: Sicilian sonnet

Talking Heads: sonnet (Sicilian)

Published on July 7, 2025

Who in the world do we believe we are,
imagining our words alone suffice
to change the future’s course or shift our stars?
How much can you expect for that small price?
So little fuel will take us just so far.
What’s worth achieving takes some sacrifice;
the answer is never a lower bar,
unless your goal is a fool’s paradise.

There is no evolution of the mind
without some kind of action made out loud.
It’s not enough that a thing is conceived,
a mere equation with all terms defined.
So you can talk – no reason to be proud.
It’s only by your acts you are believed.

07 Jul 2025

What Now?: Sicilian sonnet

Published on May 31, 2017

What now? Is there sufficient cause for reaching
beyond the edge of darkness? Will we find
ourselves subjected to more endless preaching?
Are we fit students for any new teaching?

And what good any lesson merely bleaching
the past of any stains we’ve left behind,
or drowning out the crows and vultures screeching
on ancient battlefields we’ve tilled, or mined?

Out there, far past the edge of our remembrance,
is there a quiet place to stop and think,
not quite Valhalla or fabled Olympus

but just a stretch of nothing, where the dance
is still, and with just cool water there to drink,
we fade into a single, silent us?

31 MAY 2017