Sonnets for Ashley Faye: Sonnet 3

This sonnet has been published online by the Society of Classical Poets. It follows in the footsteps of one of my favorite traditions: writing about the inability to write about something. In this case, the ineffable "something" is a perfect moment one early morning in the Spring after our son, Luke, was born.

How can I write you anything, my love?

How can I write your smile in fourteen lines?

A hundred thousand lines are not enough,

much less to write the splendor of your mind.

How can I write the way I felt today,

when I awoke before the morning sun,

and in the bedside lamplight, there you lay,

smiling, watching me sleep, nursing our son?

How can I write the way your hair appeared,

red in the lamplight, fallen on the bed?

Or how your voice fell softly on my ears

like angels singing everything you said?

How can I write a sonnet true enough
for even one true moment of my love?

Sonnets for Ashley Faye: Sonnet 2

This sonnet has been published online by the Society of Classical Poets. I wrote it after one of our annual visits to her grandmother's farm in upstate NY.

Last year, we watched a million fireflies

at Grandma Bartlett’s farm, twinkling in the trees

as if reflecting all the billion stars

against the treetops rippling in the breeze.

My memory is dim, but in the dark

I think we reached to hold each other’s hand;

and in the moonlight, warmed each other’s heart;

and let out sighs across the glowing land.

That night, I saw my future in the swarms

of swirling lights: the dancing of those wraiths

revealed a thousand fears, a hundred harms,

and yet a hundred hopes, a thousand faiths;

and in the dance, I seemed to see your smile—
love of my life, and mother of my child.

Sonnets for Ashley Faye: Sonnet 1

This sonnet has been published online by the Society of Classical Poets. It was the first sonnet I ever wrote for my wife, Ashley Faye Harris.

I’ve awed at the Atlantic’s bluest depths,

and peered at the Pacific’s deepest blues;

the warm blue summer waters of Key West,

and cold blue winter on the Charles, too.

I’ve watched the moon rise up above the Thames,

the stars upon a Minnesota lake;

I’ve seen the morning sun reflected in

the misty sweep of San Francisco Bay.

But nowhere in the world have I seen blue,

and nowhere have I seen the shimmering sky,

come close to matching what I’ve seen in you

when something lights a smile in those blue eyes.

As if an ocean hides beneath your face,
as if a heaven shines behind your gaze.

Three sonnets published

Three of my sonnets have just been published online by the Society of Classical Poets! I wrote each of them for my wife, Ashley Faye Harris. I'm thrilled to share my feelings for Ashley with my readers, and I hope you will enjoy the poems. You can check them out now on the SCP website, and I will also post them here on the website over the next three days.