Acknowledgments:

Until, Nuclear Impact, Shabda Press anthology,
2017. 1st Place, American Aesthetic Sonnet Competition,
2016. Out of Sequence: The Sonnets
Remixed, ed. D. Gilson, Parlor Press, 2015.
Of Temperament, 1st place: Great River Shakespeare
Festival Sonnet Competition, Winona, MN.
Summer 2013.
A Sonnet for Old Glory, 1st place, Greater Lima
(OH) Competition, 1988

For Salt

When particles of eccentricity
explain away the world that I embrace
with wonder and with love; when gravity
creates new worlds of fire and ice in space

at distances impossible to ken;
and when, they say, we parallel this life
well, then, — in simultaneous other lives
it’s time to rethink everything anew:

the way we talk of trilobites and one-
celled prokaryotes and paramecia, too;
the way we leave our enemies undone;
the way to find a way for me and you.

A day is but a day unless we halt
the universe with several grains of salt.

6.

Each day
I discover you
anew.
Some offhand word
or gesture
stops me
where I stand
and marks
my love for you
from that point on.