Haiku

 change in the wind

the farmer down the road

manures his fields

Cattails

Haibun

LOST and FOUND 

 

The pain of loss never goes away permanently. Sometimes remembering brings sadness, sometimes joy, sometimes pain. The realization that so many once in my life are gone pounds like a full-blown migraine. Again, I go through an array of emotions, wishing I had said this or that, done this or that. Husband, father, mother, brother-in-law, people I have known well and those who were only acquaintances. It hurts to remember, but it would hurt more if I forgot, if I tried and couldn't picture my husband as he sat reading, my mother smiling as she stitched a dress for me, my father whistling as he made the Christmas dinner, Archie as he smoked his cigar and sipped a scotch, Herman as he sat at a picnic table laughing with my son. The pleasure and the pain.  

 

daffodils

remembering again

when to bloom

Frogpond

Haiga Stories

Haigaonline
 

          CAPE COD

  

Early evening, the back yard of a summer cottage.  I am alone, except for the hidden life under the porch, in trees and bushes and in a shallow ravine of wild grapevines,

 

Cloudy and cool, the air heavy with damp. Chipmunks dart from under the porch into the bushes and back. A small rabbit, like part of a magician's trick, suddenly appears on the grass munching clover. Just a handful of softness. 

 

On a low pine branch, a plump robin.  His orange breast brightly visible in the graying dusk. Sleek and lordly, he turns his head, gives a few whistles, flies down to peck in the grass, then back to the branch.  Again and again, the same procedure.  This is my territory his call seems to say.  My branch. 

 

Crows, starlings, a pair of blue jays and a pair of cardinals.  In and out of trees, in and out of the ravine. A sparrow inspects the brick patio, then hops away.  More robins. Too many and too fast to identify which call comes from which bird, except for the lordly robin back on the pine branch.

 

Damper now, and colder. Mosquitoes find my bare legs. Still, I remain. There are fireflies, signaling from the ravine, the wind speaking to me through the trees, the thin, gray light not yet gone in the west . 

 

                                                            a country night–

                                                            slowly the quiet

                                                            wraps me inside

 

Nisqually Delta Review