Comment haiku tag archives

Somewhere in NJ

One day someone killed Sam the Mindreader. I found him squashed and dried up. I stayed there for a long time just looking and listening to the creek running across the rocks. Suddenly I was left with a name in the emptiness, a name I didn’t know what to do with.

The mind-reader’s name
seemed hollow after his death –
just me, rambling.

*

simply wait

That night I dreamed of my first home, of the trees outside the closet-sized room with the pink rose wallpaper where I spent my childhood, and the scent of lilac in the spring. In the next room my parents argued and loved, dreamed and worried. Our lives there, now vanished, seemed as solid and indestructible as those tall oaks and catalpas outside my window.

In a hospital bed
with a view of bare branches,
dreams of long-lost homes.

*

Feathers of Hope

This creature emerges from decomposing piles. [drawing]

Placed on a white page,
the maggot looks anything
but white.

*

frizzyLogic

It grew cold, and the cold grew on all surfaces.

Lovely white hair
that crumples in the sun:
frost on a rose hip.

*

Burning Silo

We found the remains of dead seabirds and a sea lion, along with bits and pieces of crabs, clam, oysters and fish. The Black Oystercatchers (Haematopus bachmani) and various species of gulls seemed busy as they poked between rocks and patrolled sandy beaches.

Skull of a seabird
washed up before the sea was half-
finished with it.

*

the cassandra pages

But something about these little, simple solids delights me: the way a few little flat sheets of paper become something so firm and beautiful.

Fed up with the blank page,
it’s so satisfying to make
a paper airplane!

*

tasting rhubarb

[photos of ice-skaters]

In a world of ice,
imagine how we would flock
to a walking rink!

*

Clouded Drab

Some serious lumps of beef on sale at Borough Market.

Red and gold foil,
a glistening side of beef:
Christmas at the butcher’s.

frizzyLogic

We crawled cautiously, semi-sighted, across junctions and around corners until, on the slope by the park, we turned head on toward the sun. That first lick of low light was enough to temper the ice which now slid softly sideways under the rhythm of the blades.

The first touch of sun
and the windshield frost is gone —
so clear a view!

*

Light Verse for a Heavy Universe

Most of the numbers in the world are wrong and always have been. Government agencies ceaselessly and shamelessly revise their figures. Scientists and engineers “refine” theirs. Economists “massage” their data and finally turn the charts upside-down or sideways to make the numbers match reality.

Counting to 10 can help prevent a row –
is having a number better than having a cow?
Our days are numbered, we think, but we don’t know how.
Clocks make us forget that every moment is now.

*

Twitter [note on login page, 11/16]

You’ll be able to access Twitter again in just a second. We’re just shuffling a few things around. Just hang tight… [emphasis added]

Just
an adjustment, but so un-
just!

*

One Word

I didn’t write today. I cleaned.

Last week sucked mightily.

I have the next three days off.

This is not a poem. This is how my brain is working now.

I want D to be happy. I want Moby to be happy.

Moby is easier. He got to lie in the sun on a curl of red wool today.

This is not a poem.
This is how my brain is working now.
I want D to be happy.

*

bird by bird

Here’s the Cordelia resident snowy egret, which perches on pens and pools and knows how to get free food…

At feeding time
for the de-oiled waterfowl,
a snowy egret.

*

Watermark

I am twenty, walking home from work in Billings. A man in a car calls me over to ask directions. When I get to the car, I see that he is exposed, masturbating. I turn away, thinking this did not happen. I hear the words: this did not happen. I even see the words pass by my eyes, like the ticker on the bottom of the CNN screen (cable news, which hasn’t yet been invented): THIS … DID … NOT … HAPPEN.

Penis in hand,
he calls a woman over
to ask directions.

*

box elder

…and, of course, button-eyed frogs. I say of course, because, in truth, my sister is a frog phobic (and I will leave it to you to find out the correct Greek-rooted word for that), and as so often happens with phobias, the object has become something of a motif in her life and work!

Buttons for eyes
on the bestiary quilt –
you’ll find them at night.

*

{ Never Neutral }

I spend long hours staring at the computer. Autism redefined. Suddenly, an eyelid starts to twitch, then the biceps, or the triceps sometimes, starts to pulse, like a heart, like a rabbit inside a magician’s hat, like saying, take me out of here, “remember me”. The ghost is not in the machine, but in the body enslaved by the machine.

There on the glass
when the monitor goes dark,
my own sad face.

Meanwhile, back in the holler

So there are lilacs blooming in the dooryard, and it is November.

I also saw peaches, pears and hickories in bloom on the way home from Gallatin the other day.

Trees blossoming
even as their leaves turn yellow:
it hurts to look.

*

box elder

And this is a picture of my left big toe, getting over familiar with a sea anemone. Mostly because I just posted this today on our family blog, where the subject of feet has come up, and it was all shrunk and ready to go. (The photo, not my foot).

Toe to tentacle
with a sea anemone,
what nacreous nails!

*

Burning Silo

The first morning after arriving, we found many Pelicans gathered on the wharf in a section of the harbour. By the next morning, the numbers had multiplied to the point that almost every square foot of wharf was occupied by these birds.

Pelicans on the wharf
waiting out the storm all face
the same direction.

*

Theriomorph

Beyond the glass, two white-tails head downstream;
one walks the north bank, the other the south.

Dead deer in the creek:
a vulture rises from its perch
between the antlers.

*

tasting rhubarb

The ‘cells’ were my favourites: intricate, enclosing, troubling dolls’ houses for grown-ups where I could have lingered, playing mind-games, for hours.

In the bush by my door
it’s the second winter now
for that cocoon.
__________

Oddly enough, a WordPress “child” category can only have a single parent. So I guess I’ll place this new category for comment haiku under Poems & poem-like things, though it could just as easily go under Blogs and blogging.

Haiku comment week continues after a two-day pause. Actually, I might make have made this a permanent part of my blogging, and retire have retired the Smorgasblog. We’ll see.

My theory of why haiku in English work: it’s the three lines, and the fact that the middle one usually has one more stress than the other two. That, and the lack of direct metaphor — that reticence. The spaces at the end of each line prepare us for the space afterwards, which is needed to do the extra work that haiku require of a reader, if they’re any good (and some of mine aren’t, I realize).

*

chatoyance

[photo]

Slipping through a crack
in the shed wall, the sun finds
the one round thing.

*

Light Verse for a Heavy Universe

What isn’t wrinkled? Plastic. Glass. Chrome.
Unless, through a microscope, you discover
the scandalous truth.

A verse must be light
to traverse the hidden depths
in every surface.

*

the cassandra pages

Tonight, the priest on his right listened, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and didn’t say anything; B. smiled a bit more broadly, enjoying ruffling the feathers. The question is actually timely: while traditional Catholic and Anglican parishes all the province are emptying, groups of young people are forming their own house churches, sharing bread and fellowship, prayer, meditation, and community.

Steady presences:
a friend, a journal, the smile
of a silent priest.

*

Blaugustine (Nov. 2)

The transition from canvas to camera to computer to website to internet doesn’t allow for accurate reproduction. Never mind, at least you can follow the changes. I don’t know if any more apples are going to appear.

Even the vase
on the windowsill wants
to be an apple.

*

Riverside Rambles

Tucker and I walked over to Dogbane Corner, one of my favorite neglected patches of weedy vegetation. The dogbane pods have burst and I took these shots.

On the weedy lot
near the new jail, dogbane seeds
loosen in the wind.

*

The House & other Arctic musings

What? One hundred and thirty-seven Nunavut bloggers?

Bloggers vanish
in the long Nunavut winter
as their fingers go numb.

*

Marja-Leena Rathje

I also learned, to my great surprise, that ‘marraskuu’, the Finnish name for this month, means ‘month of the dead’. But wait, it may not be like Dí­a de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead as celebrated in Mexico. It’s thought to come from the earth being ‘martaana’ or in a state of death.

All Souls Day:
the dead hortensia speaks
in a thin whisper.

*

bird by bird

Red-legged partridges are not native to the Americas. This one obviously belongs to someone. We tried to catch it but it flew onto the roof. If it isn’t careful, it’s going to belong to the red-tailed hawk that’s been flying around all day, calling…

Christmas already?
A red-legged partridge on the roof,
a red-tailed hawk.