Robert M

Robert M. Simmons

from Added Entries (Poems 1991- )

Walter's Sonnet

Mont Blanc it was not

but Walter was every bit the bard

as he sat on his favorite bench

beside the duck pond in Sandwich

where red-winged blackbirds

chattered in the marsh grass

near a restored gristmill

across from a tea house

and a small museum

like a scene

from a nineteenth-century watercolor

hung in the reading room

of a Greek Revival athenaeum

putting the finishing touches

on his sonnet.

Time was his theme

and how it can seem to stand still.

The season was autumn

evidenced by a bright orange maple leaf

drifting sluggishly over the water

then hovering above the surface

as a myriad of images, observations and memories

rushed through his mind

faster than a data storm

through fiber optics:

yachts in the Cape Cod Canal

on their way to the islands

as he crossed the Bourne Bridge

idiots everywhere talking on cell phones

youths wearing baseball caps to the side

and baggy pants

hobbling down the street

like a flock of Galapagos penguins

and there are those

who still do not believe in evolution

Muslims bowing to Mecca

on the tarmac

at Dulles International Airport

severed heads on the Internet

another middle-aged jackass

with a pony-tail

and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt

those who market

noise, poison, vulgarity and ignorance

retreating to ever more refined enclaves

financed by their profits

and protected from their wares

John Kerry windsurfing off Nantucket

while hurricane Frances

bears down on the Bahamas

twin lighthouses

flanking Route 28 in Wareham

the iconic "Gateway to the Cape"

like something from a postcard

dated 1941

his mother in her youth

passed this spot

on her way to carefree summer days

on the beach

now she was gone

and he was the only one left

sprinting towards the finish line

Gerald Finzi's Eclogue

playing on the radio

at the very moment

he passed a sheep pasture in Lakeville

confirming once again

his cluster theory

that life is filled with odd coincidences

defying mathematical probability

just as two automobiles

speeding from opposite directions

and a lone bicyclist

on an otherwise deserted road

will all reach the point

where the road is narrowest

at precisely the same time

the Middleborough Garden Club

will hold its next meeting

in the Tom Thumb Room

of the public library

where Jamie "Tiger" Boudreau

will speak on the subject

of incorporating salvaged motorcycle parts

into the backyard landscape

he was photographed

a decade ago

standing near a Victorian hotel

in Ludlow Vermont

with a shock of red hair

and a smirk

before a dinner of chestnut soup

grilled raspberry duck

and grapefruit sorbet

later going out on the porch

during a violent lightning storm

over Okemo Mountain

which looked like the birth of the universe

or the beginning of its end

what is the speed of thought?

as the chronicle of man

moves through the measured ages

from caves to class A motor homes

and knowledge accumulates

like sand in an hourglass

becoming more complex in the process

fewer and fewer can participate

in understanding

so they cling to simpler notions

religion, superstition, anarchy

while a shrinking elite

pursue ever more inscrutable discoveries

along the route to their extinction

when the geriatric art professor died

in mid lecture

and his children

cleaned out the family homestead

for a quick sale

his oeuvre

a stack of abstract paintings

done over a fifty year period

was tossed in the dumpster

he took Ursula

in his white 1953 Sunbeam Alpine

to Glen Farm

where they tailgated

on lobster and champagne

while the Newport polo team

trounced Yale

later hearing a news report

about a Taco Bell employee

assaulted by an angry customer

with a chalupa

what the hell is a chalupa?

he asked

but did not really care to know

the same year

that "April in Portugal" was a hit

he went to Johnson's Pond in Coventry

with his mother and father

and had a cone of coffee ice cream

an expression of ineffable horror

frozen by the executioner's blade

proudly displayed before a video cam

all in the name of religion

experience is the window to the world

quantified by science

described in art

the results converging

where Relativity and the "Grecian Urn"

fuse at the instant of excellence

truth is a single stationary point

with no mass

against which all movement

is measured

he wanted his poems to be perfect

sparkling gems without defects

giving solace to life

unlike most things in this world

would there be time to write them all?

At least his sonnet was finished

and now his companions were the stars

silently populating the heavens

in the daylight invisible

making him one with their oblivion

and with their magnitude

as the bright orange maple leaf

dropped to the surface of the water

drifting slowly away.

On the ride home

he stopped at Uncle Jon's

for a soy latte

and white chocolate macadamia nut cookie

served by a senior from Tabor

about to receive the baton.

The duck pond in Sandwich, Massachusetts, setting for "Walter's Sonnet"

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Subjects: poems about, time, change, eternity, knowledge, science, truth, religion, cluster theory, sonnets, poetry, poems

Walter's Sonnet