MAP 56

This week's theme: Return of the Lost Sonnets - the ones I lost in the computer crash of Nov. 1. Thanks for all the resends.

Upcoming Themes:

Issue #57 - There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays

Issue #58 - The Holocaust - sequel to issue #55

Issue #59 - Ars Poetica: Poetry about Poetry

First, my Thanksgiving haiku:

Turkey day taught me

Gluttony is fattening

Same lesson each year

Here are the sonnets:

1. From David Ziff, of Boca Raton

Definitions: Solipsistic: Idea that only self exists. Vetch: an herb

Solipsistic

Immured in thought I seldom saw the sky,

And took for granted flowers and the wind,

Rains came and went - I never wondered why,

Untouched by spring or summer - too thick-skinned;

Impervious to the ocean¹s distant fetch,

The bright appeal of leaves in May and June,

Nor was I interested in bitter vetch

Or tempted by an autumn afternoon.

You freed this recluse with your first hello -

A door was opened on a wider world.

Was this a sunset? This a moon¹s bright glow?

Was this a lake? A vase of roses unfurled?

I saw first with your eyes till I could see,

Discovered first through you reality.

2. From Howard Frost of West Yorks, England

Chameleon

Now is the Spring, when sleeping things awake

And what seems safe and dormant plays a trick.

So without comment will I rise and make

My bid to see just what makes my life tick.

For I am subtle, self contained and slow.

Like the chameleon, lying on the sand

In want of sun, reflecting rocks below,

Warming to gold only within your hand.

But there are other places, in whose heat

My gold would rise, I am assured 'tis so.

Are there such places on my daily beat?

Places where poets are loved? I ought to know.

Houses where, even on this windswept moor

An honest Bard is never shown the door.

3. From Ross Clark of Brisbane, Australia

Widowed Scotch

"Drink?" you said, interrogatively,

but we took it as an imperative,

and grabbed a bottle containing about

ten shots of twelve-year-old Scotch.

"That was Jack's" you told us, as we

poured; "he's been dead eight years now":

and suddenly we were raising twenty-

year-old Scotch to our trembling lips.

"Here's to Jack," we toasted, "and to you"

and then we drank and talked and drank

and laughed and drank some more, till

Jack's bottle, your bottle, was at last

empty, and we could wander home, warmed

by his spirit distilling all those years.

4. From Carl Cattiatore of Pelican Island, N.J.

A Sonnet

[English]

A sonnet sweet and rife with rhyming prose

with pleasant words within its structured scheme,

to please and titillate the ears of those

that care to read another poet's dream.

~

I give these thoughts for all the eyes that see

and pray they'll read, perhaps, to shed a tear,

or smile or laugh at least perchance agree

this labor love should reach another's ear.

~

I walk the shaky walk that newness brings

and dig into another's common ground,

I hope for some that read, this sonnet sings,

for others taste, at least they find it sound.

~

Advice for those who shun this sweetened fruit

this meal of words can leave you sate and mute