Sketchbook  Jeffrey Woodward, US

 

 

Sonnet Correspondence School We dread, of course, the social obligation In random phrases we commit to paper. No circular, no matchbox invitation Beckons more strangers to a private caper. We jot efficient notes by night, forsake them, Or censor characters to boost our chances. Our shadows hug us close; we cannot shake them For all the craft and cunning of our stances. With letters, signed "best wishes," we are betting The cordial world will be sincerely taken; Postscripts, whose proofs we're busily forgetting, Betray a countenance that world's forsaken. And though the hour is late, and dim the lighting, Queries unanswered, we continue writing.     Free Verse Edward Hopper: Sun In An Empty Room, 1963 A right angle in the wall, for the bare room is foreshortened near its nakedly small and curtainless window, serves, in fact, by the absence of any furnishings or persons to act, as blank antagonist for the sun. Light, by legible entry here, light now aslant over one vacancy, is parceled through exacting play with the corner's edge. The true, oblique progress of day is arrested, briefly, from window back, within the two unequal shifting plots: light and light's lack. The little view without— brush-stroked blur of thick foliage, mere scrap of sky—depicts nothing astir.

 

 

Haiku a winter fly of dubious provenance waits on my table     here to consult a whiskered oracle— Punxsutawney     New Year's Day ... but the party is over     a World Atlas on the coffee table snowbound     change coldly asked for, change coldly received— coughing     only the wind there to walk me through it— a withered field     the old road in the whiteout loses its way     the penciled woods not yet fully erased and winter clouds     New Year's Day— to the old hat-rack, the same old hat     there is light, also, within its shadow— an icicle

 

 

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