November New Moon Sonnet

November New Moon Sonnet

Hail, bright crescent, as pond crusts with first frost,
and black walnuts vanish to squirrel dens.
Eggs are forgotten by quieting hens —
anything not kept warm is surely lost,
or so say brown stems of goldenrod’s ghost.
Fat fills brown fur and softens chipmunk chins:
gluttony is not one of Nature’s sins.
Survival depends on who has the most
to husband, against light and warmth’s return.
Gale wind besieges branches too brittle
and tatters every leaf from red to brown.
Finches still forage — yet fewer each morn
set out from ivy bowers to battle;
paper wasp nest shatters as it comes down.

Sonnet for July New Moon

Hail, bright crescent, as wintergreen ripens,
changing pale white blooms for greener berries.
Daylily withers but aster opens;
puffball conceals what spring onion carries,
while galls appear on maple and alder.
Crabgrass and clover jostle with plantain,
while corvées of ants grow ever bolder,
gathering food for their secret mountain.
Orioles flash through dangling willows,
as goldfinches feast on first early seeds
and swallows sweep river for mosquitoes.
Robins and jays peck bugs among tall weeds.
Crickets rehears for an August chorale,
while fishers and badgers skulk on the prowl.

Long delay on this one, but I hope you all enjoy it. July Full Moon will appear shortly.

Sonnet for the June New Moon

Hail, bright crescent, as raspberries redden,
as milkweed pushes out seedbeds to bloom;
great blue heron spreads wings across heaven;
young buck nibbles grass before night’s first gloom.
Aster, star-flower, beach pea bloom and wilt.
Marsh mallow and marigold have their days.
Mullein unsheathes sun-sword above green hilt;
St. John’s Wort absorbs summer’s longest rays.
Yet pied-rump fawn lies fallen and fly-egged,
with haunches gnawed off and ribcage shattered.
Moth meets web of spider long-legged;
maple leaf droops and oak leaf grows tattered
where beetles feast on oaths made in May,
contracts signed between predator and prey.

This one is way late.  Apologies for the delay, but I hope you enjoy it.  The more of this series I write (and we are now only thirteen sonnets from the end), the harder it is to produce them on time.  So many themes to draw together, and so much of the sense of the season to find… it’s becoming difficult to figure out new patterns.  Sometime soon I have to read the whole series beginning to end, and see where I am.

Does anyone want to help get them published?

New Moon of March Sonnet

Hail, bright crescent, scything through winter’s last
snowfall, lying frosty-white on hard earth.
Though north wind may not have one more blast,
nothing can she do to cease soil’s birth:
bacteria and mycorrhizoids bloom
to feed in turn both nematode and slug.
Blind earthworm in her blind tunnels of gloom
loosens frozen soil for mole and bug.
Beetles birth from galls, boletus from spores,
and grasses spread from roots among fragmented rocks.
These draw dead minerals through secret doors.
Natural enzymes each molecule unlocks
to transform plain matter to something more
lively and vibrant than it was before.

February New Moon Sonnet

Hail, bright crescent: earth sleeps inside white shell,
while diamond shingles both river and lake,
although hammerbeaks of woodpeckers tell
how insects and sees must begin to wake.
Snowmelt in rivulets churns slush to mud,
freezes at nightfall, as pure potential.
Red robin sings from the black birch’s bud;
ice-locked pond yearns to become torrential,
when cracks carry rainfall and heat to heart.
Warm days brightly sparkle, cold nights twinkle;
wrens build nests more engineering than art.
Snow sharply defines land’s every wrinkle,
yet sunset through branches begins to blur,
as beech births brachets, and elms start to spur.

This is four or five days late; my apologies for the delay. I was out walking yesterday evening, and the moon kind of surprised me for the first time in a while. I knew, intellectually, that moondark was last Friday/Saturday, but I hadn’t expected the moon to be quite so large, quite so quick. After two and a half years of writing these sonnets, it was nice to be surprised by the moon again. She sneaks up on you, and changes the way you look at the world, every time.

Sonnet for the New Moon of January

Hail, bright crescent, reflecting on thin ice,
which by slow advance has scalded water;
yet sudden sun bursts through, to melt all trace,
so gale-churned wave spindrifts without fetter.
Here were earthworms, crawling in open air;
robins did chase them, across gray-brown grass.
Hawk’s talons blur by, but clever is hare:
he’s safe in his warren, where brambles mass.
Softness and suppleness both flee away;
both earth and sky cut stiff and sharp with chill.
Yet night stars dance, nimbler than cold, clear day,
twinkling though owl-eye paints them standing still.
Birch and magnolia wait, though ripe to bloom—
veiled brides waiting for spring, as for a groom.

Sonnet for New Moon of December

Hail, bright crescent, singing to barren wastes,
newly enriched by soft, gentle rain.
In warm nests now gather both birds and beasts,
to feast on such berries as yet remain,
to drink of fat rootstock, eat feckless mouse,
or gobble up insect under bark.
Each family lives by old rules of its house:
eat sunlight or flesh, hunt by day or dark,
and dwell in hollowed oak or hollowed earth,
according to known customs of its clan.
Each studies in turn, death, living and birth,
acting happily within shapeless plan.
And you, pale Lady, bring shape to all life:
scything change by phases of peace and strife.

New Moon Sonnet

Hail, bright crescent, when owl glides into wood,
and sparrow perches where icicles hang.
Even winter death proves sacred and good,
since it carries away by frost and fang
all that was delicate or decrepit,
and steels all beings, priming them to bloom.
Leaf pods terminate each twig and branchlet,
latticing pink sun in dawn’s dying gloom.
First songbirds nibble at last year’s berries;
mushroom and termite gnaw on wind-felled oak.
Vigor rises from that which death buries:
shattered shell on leaves stirs alchemy’s yolk.
Life springs up from dead flora and fauna—
Big Bangs bursting from seas of nirvana.

December New Moon Sonnet

December New Moon Sonnet

Hail, bright crescent, sharpened with whetstone-breeze
for harvesting every last branch and bloom.
Cold-hearted, you cut the gathering gloom,
and slay every beast still taking his ease,
who was still unprepared at winter’s tease:
first ice-crust on lake-shore, and cricket’s doom,
egg-sac dangling in spider’s old loom.
Geese pay no mind to rambling Aries.
Ants protect their queen in the deepest holes,
Mouse stitches quilts of beech leaf, birch and grass,
Sparrows seize the sky from robin and wren.
Where are the chipmunks, the rabbits and moles?
Maple sinks in, waits for winter to pass,
and spring’s green return to meadow and fen.

November New Moon Sonnet

slightly delayed…

Hail, bright crescent, presiding at first frost
when the garden finally gives up its ghost,
and winter makes good on its yearly boast,
to savage each tree ’till its leaves lie lost.
Blackbird flocks coolly calculate the cost
of staying behind; elm proves a poor host
and fox has cunning plans to make the most
of all his neighbors: each will he accost
in turn, demanding a tithe of their blood.
Mouse scurries in the dark, hiding from owl
who hunts over meadows of withered grass.
Once-dry streams become a shivering flood,
tremoring at touch of coyote’s howl,
which shatters the forest roof like verdant glass.

I’ve more or less decided to write another twenty-four new and full moon sonnets for 2006, so that I have two sets: one for years when the new moon comes early in the month, and another set for when the new moon comes late in the month. Haven’t figured out how to handle blue moons yet, other than to take them as they come.

As it is, there are only three sonnets left in this particular cycle, and then it’s time to do one edit through, and then think about finding a publisher. If I just publish the sonnets, it’s not a very large collection; if I publish the quarter and cross-quarter days, it’s much larger. But that’s a discussion for a later time.