Afterlife (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

On visiting your native town, we walk

The streets you used to walk before we met.

We talk about the sights. But as you talk,

And as you smile, I can’t help see regret.

Some memory transfixes every spot:

Old dreams, perhaps, of what would gladden you

In years to come. The years have come: I’m not

The future you were looking forward to.

How brave you are—to walk with me, yet bear
Such disappointment, such surprising grief
That, just this once, you can’t humanely share
With me, the one who usually brings relief.

My fault: I thought that you’d enjoy the week.
You take my hand and press it to your cheek.

Copyright © 2023 by Eric Meub Eric Meub is a California poet & architect.

Formality (a sonnetFarewell to Moristotle & Co.)

By Eric Meub

For Morris Dean












 
 
 
 
Formality

Elizabethans and Romantics taught
Us that the sonnet needs a plot to tend,
A garden walled-off from the world, where thought
May blossom for a lady—or a friend.

Bibliophile (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

I like it when you’re looking into Pope:

His was an age of rhymed enlightenments.

The Essays and Epistles give me hope

We’ll make a couplet of our common sense.

Lord Byron, though, would have your lover drawn

More like a rugged, weather-beaten Giaour.

And really, did they ever get it on,

Or was it only talk? Give me an hour.

Summoner (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

I wish I had the skill to draw your face,

Make quick work of epitomes as though

Da Vinci, Dürer and Tiepolo

Had taken turns at talent in my place.

I’d craft mandalas of your brows and eyes,

With meditations on the subtle dip

That circumnavigates your lower lip.

From every pad of paper, you’d arise.

Titania (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon, king of the fairies, plays a trick on Titania, his queen: he plies his sleeping consort with a potion that induces love at first sight. Meanwhile, Oberon’s servant-sprite Puck has mischievously turned the head of a local workman into that of an ass. Of course, it is this monstrosity that Titania sees upon waking….]

Titania

It’s in the script: you’ll never get to choose

A paramour from your exclusive class.

So ask yourself, what have you got to lose?

There’s something visceral about an ass.

River (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on February 8, 2014, as “Second Saturday’s Sonnet.”]

An unexpected gust puffs flames into

the candles, blowing suns across the glow

of water. Flashes let the waves slip through

like fabric over muscles in the flow.

Pianist (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

You’ll practice a sonata hours on end—

Your fingers plucking clustered harmonies

From music books and banks of ivory keys—

But I’m not jealous of the time you spend.

You’ll master Mozart, Chopin, Debussy,

And then, one fine September, polish off

The Third Concerto of Rachmaninoff,

But I don’t envy virtuosity.

Carbonation (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

Sweet treatises upon your auburn hair,

Encomiums on dinner, dance and dress,

And epigrams let fall from each caress:

These are the tributes, love, I daily bear.

Deploying every stratagem of craft,

I use (perhaps abuse) internal rhyme,

The syntax torture into sense sublime,

While metaphors weigh anchor fore and aft.

Tan Line (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

The surf accepts perfection wading in,

But coming out, you’ve let your swimsuit slip

An inch below one equatorial hip

To bare an ivory strip of unbaked skin.

That patch, before the shimmering marine,

Gleams from your silhouette as bright as bone,

Admitting to my map a tropic zone

That scarce another eye has ever seen.

Tempera (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

We’re at the moment when the charming flirt

Becomes a god: one fingertip cavorts

With buttons at the bottom of my shirt,

The other with the zipper on your shorts.

But love’s too Botticellian for this.

Let’s pause our Primavera now, before

The dance-encircling Graces of our bliss

End up disheveled on the forest floor.

Poetry & Portraits: Theseus

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Theseus
By Eric Meub

[Editor’s Note: I chose to republish this Poetry & Portrait pairing today because, 79 years ago today, my mother gave birth to me, and I noticed that the last time I republished the pairing was the day after my 78th birthday – though no god gave ME the body of an ad for underwear. Eric’s poem & Susan’s drawing first graced us as Second Saturday’s Sonnet on June 14, 2014, which happened to be the date of my late sister Flo Elowee’s 84^th birthday. I trust that her husband, Don Story, DID have such a body….]


The king gave me protection, and the god
the body of an ad for underwear,
but on the docks of Troezen in a fraud
of both I tempted every sailor there.

Prize (a poem)

Second Saturday’s Sonnet
6 Years & a Month Ago

By Morris Dean

[Originally published on November 15, 2015, here slightly amended.]



“Stately?” she quizzed my comment on her walk,
    her high-heeled shoes exalting shapely limbs
displayed in tights that summoned men to gawk
    and sing out praises fit for churchly hymns.

Poetry & Portraits: Bottom

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Bottom
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on Aug. 9, 2014]

Why bother getting out of bed? It’s not
As if we’re here in season: covered pool
And lounge chairs stacked like firewood as a rule.
I say resort, you think forsaken spot.

Poetry & Portraits: Ode to a Department Store

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Ode to a Department Store
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on May 13, 2017]

Discriminate, my child! Leave cheaper wares
to bargain-basement huntresses downstairs;
let Target’s multitudes stampede or graze;
let online shoppers stalk in negligees.

Poetry & Portraits: Puzzle

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Puzzle
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on December 12, 2015]

I read too much. My second husband used
to make inspections of my bedside drawer,
then catch me at the sink: You’re fifty-four
for God’s sake, Marianne, why start on Proust?

Poetry & Portraits: Theseus

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Theseus
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on June 14, 2014]

The king gave me protection, and the god
the body of an ad for underwear,
but on the docks of Troezen in a fraud
of both I tempted every sailor there.

Poetry & Portraits: Willamette Valley

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Willamette Valley
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on April 14, 2018]

1
A white circus tent
looms beyond the ridge of spruce:
first snow on Mt Hood.

Poetry & Portraits: San Francisco

Drawing by Susan C. Price

San Francisco
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on February 10, 2018]

She was an athlete, finely tuned.
How fat with pastries she ballooned:
a courtesan to raise an itch
upon the impotently rich.

Poetry & Portraits: Passover

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Passover
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on January 13, 2018]

A breakfast table mystery: I see
each section – Datebook, Sports, Society –
but not the front page. Mother starts to shrink
when asked about it, busy at the sink.

Poetry & Portraits: Surprise Party

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Surprise Party
By Eric Meub

My current flame has given me a vase.
A vase. I spread a smile across my face
And gasp and gush about the thing too long:
It’s bright, exuberant, completely wrong.