Tag: haiku

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lines for a wet summer

gravel piles

A wet summer.
At the entrance to the hollow,
twin peaks of gravel.

*

Storm-carved ruts
on the gravel driveway
fill up with hailstones.

*

damselfly

Blue damselflies
patrol the slow-moving waters
of the blueberry bog.

*

Done berry picking,
I wash the bog mud off my legs
with brown bog water.

*

Morning thunder,
then rain. “It’s just getting it out
of its system, right?”

*

An indoor picnic.
The child climbs the steep stairs
to the green room.

*

shirt window

In lieu of a curtain,
a checkered shirt catches
the evening sun.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Poem Dissection 101


Via bubbl.us, via Never Neutral.

Poem dissection, like frog dissection, isn’t as straightforward as it may at first appear. Take, for example, Matsuo Basho’s famous haiku about a frog. Are the relationships between the ideas in the poem generative, associative, or a mixture of both? Here are two possible ways to map them, which strike me as equally valid.

So obviously with longer poems, many of the routes become quite arbitrary indeed.

bubbl.us diagram of a poem
Click the image to see a larger and more legible version.

The best I can say about this exercise is that it helped me discover a relationship between two ideas in the poem that I hadn’t consciously recognized, the one between ‘it wants to go home with you’ and ‘there are no motels in this vacancy.’ Whether this will be of any real use to me if/when I get around to revising the poem, I don’t know, but in general I do find that, while the intuitive mind ought to be paramount during the original drafting, the analytical mind should take over during editing and revision. So as far as the author is concerned, this sort of exercise can’t hurt, even if it looks like a bloody mess to everyone else.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lines for a summer thunderstorm

Distant thunder.
A common wood satyr
clings to the screen.

*

A close lightning strike
& a second later, raindrops,
the bleating of a fawn.

*

Through sheets of rain
at the edge of the meadow,
the dim outline of a doe.

*

Rain presses
on the horizontal leaves:
a random fluttering.

*

As I watch the storm,
a fly with quivering wings
explores my pants leg.

*

The lightning past,
the fawn stands on its hind legs
& bats at a low branch.

*

Towhee
Towhee
Towhee
Towhee
Towhee
Towhee
all through the downpour.

*

Their one day ends
in prostration —
orange daylilies.

*

The sky brightens,
but the storm’s darkness lingers
in rain-soaked leaves.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lines for a June heat wave

half-grown groundhog
Click to see larger

A half-grown groundhog —
“Wait while I get the camera,” I say,
& it does.

*

Recognized by its glide,
the first monarch butterfly
back from the south.

*

In the air-conditioned mall,
the plastic flowers are safe
from the blistering heat.

*

Drinking from a tap
in the base of an old elm,
a Penn State squirrel.

*

I run into someone
I first met 17 years ago,
in cicada time.

*

So good, I don’t want to finish it:
fresh strawberries sliced
into stewed rhubarb.

*

Inside the package
stamped “Royal Mail,”
a book of small stones.

*

Driving the tractor into the woods,
mountain laurel blooming
above the roar.

*

Back from mowing,
I find a ground beetle trapped
in the kitchen sink.

*

A game in a dream:
no one knows the rules, or how to win.
I wake to heat lightning.

*
For another view of the half-grown groundhog, see here.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lines for a cold May

question mark butterfly

first clear day in weeks
butterflies walk slowly over
the dry forest floor

interrupted forest

interrupted ferns’
delicate tips are still clenched
against the cold

pink lady's-slipper orchid

in the cold wind
a gnat clings to a bobbing
pink lady’s-slipper

leaf pond

tent caterpillars
the vernal pond quakes under
a coat of leaf-pieces

oak apple gall

oak apple gall
I bend down for a closer look
such a fresh green globe

The first two photos are from last week; the others are from yesterday evening.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Autumn in April

Autumn in April:
leaves drift down from a beech tree,
maples are red again.

*

A millipede is climbing
the bathroom wall
next to the toothbrushes.

*

Three red-tailed hawks
dive-bomb each other
in the unseasonable heat.

*

The hugely pregnant
feral cat stares balefully
from behind the hyacinths.

*

The sprouted millet
still shows a little yellow;
goldfinches, a little green.

*

When the rain subsides,
a blue-headed vireo’s
deliberate song.

*

Watched the bears till dark.
In the morning, muddy pawprints
on the windows.

*

In the porcupine-girdled
branches of the plum tree,
a male cardinal.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

New Year round

This is a short renga: each adjacent pair of stanzas can be read as a stand-alone poem.

first sunrise of the year
the orange bellies of the clouds
are blurry with snow

a gray squirrel in estrus trailed
by two slow-motion suitors

in the wind
above the ridge a raven
croaks & somersaults

my first piss of the New Year
I’m especially careful

distant rumble
of a military jet
it’s still the same world

windows rattle with the snoring
of a late-night reveler

I clear the cookies
from my hard drive
avatar’s a question mark now

the grimy washing machine
rocks with a load of laundry

first sunrise of the year
the orange bellies of the clouds
are blurry with snow
__________

See also the New Year Haiku Collaborative Poem Dance at Watermark.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

White hair

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.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Windshield frost

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.