Sonnet for Alice N.
By Jack Collom
Why & what is sweetness all alone?
Either that or it becomes, alas, fleeting,
Which actually helps, because of rhythm.
& there’s a pale intensity to truth, no matter
How pale it is on the levels we receive on.
I mean, the minute you invent a time interval
The more it seems to “jelly out” the excitation
Of accidents; zum Beispiel, “Saginaw, Michigan.”
After a while, we almost expect him or her
To inveigle us into a cafe without bay-breasted warblers.
It’s almost like we have a streak of orange-smell
Which nobody’ll pay for because they can’t talk to it,
Although that’s probably all wrong, or at least falsified
By its very mention, like gravity. Do you agree?
Copyright Credit: Jack Collom, “Sonnet for Alice N.” from Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, published by Tuumba Press. Copyright © 2001 by Jack Collom. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Source: Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000 (Tuumba Press, 2001)