Haibun

                                                      BEING ALIVE

 Unrelenting heat. The old man with dazed eyes accepts an ice cream. The first taste sends a flicker of acknowledgement and pleasure. Although I don’t know this man or the woman who is helping him, I feel the sting of tears.

I am afraid to see myself in his role, afraid to think of a life imprisoned by mind and body, afraid to think of needing constant care and attention.

                                                    sweat between my breasts

                                                    the unpleasant awareness
                                                    of being alive

CHO, Oct. 2013

Tanka

 

                                              Tanka for Summer

                                                cool wine, sharp cheese
                                                a loaf of bread and you
                                                in the summer shade
                                                when hair was dark and limbs strong
                                                and life was still to be lived

                                                wind on the hill
                                                coming from the north
                                                my gift to you
                                                if I had the power
                                                to cool on this sultry day

                                                a river view
                                                between the vee of trees
                                                smaller each year;
                                                what I could hve seen
                                                in an earlier life

Tanka Cafe, Ribbons
Cattails
Simply Haiku, Never Ending Story

Haiku sequence

  

                                               Evening Walk

                                               walking at dusk
                                               sprectral sounds from the woods
                                               shadows jumping

                                               ripe wheat fields
                                               listening to the swoosh, swoosh
                                               as rain clouds approach

                                               waist high in weeds
                                               short-cutting through a meadow
                                               fighting the gnats

Dradonfly, 1975