Sonnet After Lines Written by Jack London

The Oak tree underneath which Jack London wrote.

Sonnet Written After Lines from Jack London

Appearances are ghosts. Life is a ghost

land -- Take, for instance the towering oak

that splays its blackened arteries toward sky,

unaware that already a pair of

buzzards perch and clot the spiral of

tributaries that wind and unwind toward

whatever blue has arrived.  How like our

own aging bodies it stands passenger

of air and time but blind as a prophet,

blind as Tiresias, we step into

this wooden shell and we rise. Shake off

that tingling rot the fog brought in

because life lies in order to live and

we'll never know how many dark birds brood

and shadow this ghost land, this life.