Sonnet 1 - How Can The Air Be Taught?

How can the air be taught no breath is drawn
Without the lively impulse that it shows?
Where can the sea be told how its blue lawn
Can swift all boats across the tidal flows?
When does the mountain see the name it writes
Across the desert sky drawn pink by dawn?
What message tells the fire what fuel it lights
To warm each lover while the other's gone?
But I, thick block of wood or cold mist, show
No fair return; no heart-true story told;
And I, cold lump of clay or dead ash, know
An empty heart would seem to only scold.
For all my lacks I can't apologize;
My all in life is just to see your eyes.

© 2003, Steven F. Lott