Tim Callahan

Chthonic Sonnet

In heat, fermenting in the soil, our lust,

so dark and moist and full of writhing life,

unbidden and unbound erupts, upthrust,

impure, untamed, with burning passion rife.

And we, attempting but to ride this beast

are carried in its wild career until,

convulsed in ecstasy, we are released

and tossed aside devoid of sense or will.

The storm has passed, and we are yet alive.

Why do we nourish this rough chthonic force

that overthrows our sense and does deprive

us of both will and sense to run its course?

We nurse unreason’s deep primeval urge

the dross of reason thus with fire to purge.

A Drift* of Quail

                         

This morning I stepped out my door and spied 

spread through my yard in peace a drift of quail.

With quiet tread I sought – to no avail –

to not disturb them at their rest. Yet, they

with one accord took flight without delay.

They rose in rout all flush and so denied

me their calm company on motored wing

and settled in another yard to sing

with muted voices and with murmurs soft,

and pecked the soil or strutted to and fro

with bobbing heads and steps both fast and slow

until another noise sent them aloft

and though their visit’s brief it is a gift

to see quail in my yard all in a drift.

·      * The collective noun for a flock of quail is a drift.

Hermetic Sonnet

The flowing currents deftly spread like sand

the clouds so white across the sky so blue,

as if a stream flows overhead as true

to courses set by gravity and land.

In flowing currents water, like a hand,

spreads grains so fine in patterns that we view

in cobalt vault above, where winds accrue

the crystal drops into a dappled band.

So seeming random is our troubled sphere,

so full of strife and senseless chaos seems

our time that hopelessness must surely grow.

And yet in sky and stream the signs appear

to say, “Beneath it all an order deems

that as it is above, thus so below.”