Tag Archives: Comment haiku

Haiku comment week continues. Today’s relatively small haul of half-baked haiku shows what happens when I prioritize my own blogging and going for a walk instead. Even without the extra effort to write haiku, it’s always hard to know how to balance writing with reading, commenting, and linking.

Velveteen Rabbi

How can I separate
from the insidious desires
of the temporary self, that voice

which whispers “today I want
warmer socks and a box of truffles
and praise from the people around me
and an easy shortcut
to everything I don’t yet know?”

It’s shine or shimmer,
sunspots on the camera lens
or my own shadow.

*

Creek Running North

There are pomegranates in the refrigerator, untouched, and persimmons ripening on the tree. On Sunday a boisterous dog covered my shins in mud. She paid close attention to me in a way instantly familiar and wrenching…

Left in the fridge,
slowly turning sweet –
pomegranates.

*

Dharma Bums

We forgot to bring the Sibley’s Bird Guide with us (that and a bunch of other important things like the telephone, the modem, the cat’s kibble), so the new birds we are seeing in the creek are unknown to us. It’s like the good old days, when we just looked and couldn’t identify anything.

I like a café
where nobody knows my name:
I can eavesdrop.

*

Somewhere in NJ

Most important is the sea and a beach empty of people. Shorebirds wheel in the far distance trailing their shadows along the shoreline. The haze at the horizon suggests gannets or scoters tumbling into themselves above the breakers.

Shadows on the surf,
reflections on the wet sand:
black skimmers.

*

Factory Town

White stands for purity.
Maybe that is not appropriate.
Use a different color.
I myself would not use a plaid cloth.

The red pillow case
I use for an altar cloth
never shows the dust.

Click to enlarge

Haiku Comment Week continues.

Up!

The five-pointed star inside each apple. The pattern of roots beneath the soil. The fetus sucking her perfect, tiny thumb. Blind fish in the depths, the ultraviolet messages flowers send to bees, all the colors hidden in white, the fossils buried deep in solid rock.

This morning
I saw behind the trees
the first bits of sky.

*

The Rain in My Purse

somewhere there’s a beard with my name on it
a nest for crumbs and smoke
because life comes at you from all directions
when you’re a man

You can have mine
when I’m done with it — right after
I rob a bank.

*

Pines Above Snow

Lucky Charm and his successors became my ambassadors to the outdoors, drawing me away from my books and literally carrying me into the woods and fields. On Lucky’s back, I chased foxes, watched a snake swallow a frog, and developed my first hostile relationship with an invasive species–bull thistle–due to its impact on bare legs.

Every young dreamer
should be issued a horse
just for the thistles.

*

Riverside Rambles

Often these wisps of spider-silk travel through the air at an angle of around thirty degrees to the ground. This is because the lower trailing end is gripped and weighted down by a small spider traveling to a new home.

To see ballooning spiders,
stand in the trailing shadow
of a tree.

*

The Middlewesterner

The farmer with flowers at Five Corners is parked there looking at them; as I pass through the intersection he pulls away.

The first morning back
on Standard Time, the farmer
checks on his flowers.

*

box elder

[photos]

The first fire
sprouts from a pine cone’s cluster
of crackling tongues.

*

Blaugustine

Couldn’t stand to look at that miserable excuse for a painting another minute so I changed my position, sat close up to the table, grabbed my palette knife and attacked.

With three empty chairs
and only two apples, this life
can hardly stay still.