Khalid Mukhtar

Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you

Sonnet

Sonnet on the Futility of Placing a Familiar Face

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You ever see a face you’ve seen before,
Then start to wonder when or where that was?
You glance askance while lined up at the store,
Or crane your neck at traffic lights because
You really want to catalog that face,
Although you do not need to, not one bit,
But you know tagging it with time and place
Will make these wasteful moments seem legit.
Should you get out of line and turn around
Or make your way across a busy street
Until that wretched face you seek is found
Indifferent to your manner indiscreet?
If such a face familiar you find,
Attribute it to capers of the mind.

On Rimbaud’s Eternity

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Inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s Eternity
How can the reaches of a mortal mind
Encompass what defies encompassing,
To plumb the depths of time and space to find
The secrets that such explorations bring.
This fascination makes my inward eye
Reflect upon the play of earth and sun:
How rays of gold that wash the morning sky
Drip crimson when the turn of day is done
Until they kiss the sparkle of the sea;
And when I see the jewels of the night,
I know the sun is rising though it be
For but a new beholder of its sight.
While minds are strained and spent in time and space,
Do hearts approach eternity by grace.

On Sonnets

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To forge a sonnet is an art supreme;
It begs a certain clarity of thought
To court a shy yet unrelenting theme
And groom it in apparel that is brought
By aptitude and skill with written word;
To gaze into suspended space and time
And trap a flight of fancy in a bird
That preens its wings to alternating rhyme:
Three quatrains, then a couplet at the end
To tenderly and mercifully wean
You from the shady branches that extend
A dozen roses from the fertile green
Imagination of a sonneteer,
More captivating than the subject here.