One More Sonnet

Tag: environment

  • That Final Breath

    That Final Breath

    Sadly, one certainty of life is death.
    And so, it is for all of us to end.
    Somewhere, there awaits our final breath.
    Inhaled, not for exchange, but to expend.
    This breath, of all breaths, is to be remorsed.
    It’s the breath most wasted and least returned.
    Consumed for the purpose of life’s exhaust;
    of continuation, it’s least concerned.
    Somewhere, then, this final breath sits in wait…
    to be swallowed deep but not ingested.
    This breath has destiny; a half-used fate;
    incomplete, resolute, uncontested.
    . But for one-breath, we have life’s abundance.
    . It’s through this-breath, that we meet redundance.

    © Tim Grace, 3 February 2013

    To the reader: Not breathless, simply exhausted of life. It’s the last breath taken and not returned. Delivers a terminal solution. The act of living is respiration. Recycled air; a generous spirit. Acts of goodness get taken for granted. We begin and end our lives with a gasp. Air is a rich and abundant resource. Not a trivial keep-worthy trinket. Not to be held for longer than needed. Its living purpose is spent and renewed.

    To the poet: In ‘to the reader’ I collected together eleven sentences loosely connected to the topic of breath. Each sentence is ten-syllables long and follows on from the previous; but it’s not poetry. The difference has something to do with a missing thread of consciousness. The thread of poetry is tied by the poet and un-ravelled by the reader; one gives the other receives … together we breathe the spirit of art.

    That Final Breath
    That Final Breath
    Picture Source:
    http://youtu.be/s7HHyAN60qI
  • Best at Dawn

    Best at Dawn

    To a hillside, a crop of houses cling,
    overlook a harbour; a city-port.
    White-washed walls absorb a sunlit morning.
    Train-tracks and traffic underline a thought.
    Birds, gulls and terns, etch the sky with traces
    of a coastal breeze; pelicans are drifting.
    There’s a long wharf with cargo in cases.
    Cranes begin a day of heavy-lifting.
    Yellow bus gives way to a staggered start;
    the zig-zag pattern of a day takes shape.
    A city’s plan runs the way of nature’s art;
    suburban portrait draws a cityscape.
    . From the suburbs a cityscape is drawn;
    . sunshine (as the artist) draws best at dawn.

    © Tim Grace, 21 January 2013

    To the reader: A new day deserves a fresh dawn. The shadows of yesterday cast aside. And so it was in New Zealand when I woke to a brand new vista. The harbour was already abuzz with import/export activity; an intermingling of nature and business trading terms of interests. The hillside-suburbs, slow to wake, were beginning to stir. Life resembling art…

    To the poet: … and who was the artist? The sun. In every respect, this consummate colourist was controlling the medium. The pallet was crisp, not saturated, with cool blues and deep greens. A yellow hue was attending to dark remnants of lingering night. The solid canvas of horizontal swatches became animated with small features of meandering life … drifting, sifting; lifting the day on its way to a zenith noon.

    Best at Dawn
    Best at Dawn