Sonnets

    Sonnets (7/9/17 – 7/17/18)

    &quotSpring Window,&quot Madeline Kasik.
    By Zach Winters, ETA ’17-’18/ Photograph by Madeline Kasik
     
     

    1. Arrival & Departure (7/9/17 – 8/18/17)

    In ringlets Summer set to bloom,
    She fathered and dismayed
    A generation of Herself,
    Herself from states displayed
    By tresses, corded Gnomic rock
    Split snakely from the grass,
    By Dandelion buds themselves
    Far inland waked from rest—

    But then light bent, and then begun that tyrant afternoon,
    Supplanting, from a sudden move,
    A miracle of June—

    And then the spiders and the birds were bathed in tawny sea,
    And then that August ocean dropped—
    And drowned stability—

     

     

    2. Placement & Displacement (8/19/17 – 12/29/17)

    Will comets fly with light retracing gait?
    Will comets paint with light the sky above?
    Will you appear, and leave, and so restate
    That stronger sadness comes from stronger love?

    Which love is just, if love reject the pain
    That deepens when some speechless distance starts,
    Mere chorus love that joins in bright refrains,
    But quiets in the time that’s spent apart—

    Yet love like ours does not simply repeat,
    And so, to me, this distance is a chance
    To rediscover you each time we meet,
    With love not just recurring, but enhanced,

    And through horrendous space I realize this:
    I love you more, the more I learn to miss.

     
     

    3. Pause & Expectation (12/30/17 – 3/4/18)

    The sweep of time is gentle in its bend
    Above the sprawling ocean of the years,
    And as it moves the water turns to tears
    In blinking eyes which sink and then ascend;
    And every hand that holds fast to a friend
    Will tremble as the current lifts and steers
    A wave that to the shoreline’s borders nears
    To evidence a time that’s at an end;

    But as these days speed on with steady haste,
    Like tides that hurry to the golden strand,
    This time we have is ours to use and waste
    While waves erase the traces of our plans—

    So if time does naught but push us to the sand,
    Then let us live forever on dry land—

     

     

    4. (3/5/18 – 7/17/18)

    Goodbyes are little deaths
    That hit you on the plane,
    And only leave you when you cease
    To need those friends again.

    Goodbyes are little deaths
    That wake you from a dream,
    When all you wanted was to lie
    In waking ecstasy—

    Somewhere I heard goodbye
    Means learning how to miss,
    But everything I ever learned
    Could not prepare for this

    For everything I ever learned
    Was rearranged by this

     
     



    Zach Winters is a 2017-2018 ETA at Jeju Jungang Girls’ High School in Jeju city, Jeju-do.