Sunday, August 14, 2016

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

Thursday, August 4, 2016

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

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Haiku

 
                                                   dinner at sunset
                                                   rainbow bubbles
                                                   on the koi pond
Presence, 2011
Haiku Calendar 2014


                                                  black angus
                                                  milling around in their pens
                                                  the first drops of rain

Modern Haiku, 2011

 
 
                                                      neighbors shouting
                                                      from the wild grapes
                                                      multiple bird calls
Pipe Dreams, 2011

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Tanka


                                                  the trellis anchored
                                                  we drape climing roses
                                                  across the top
                                                  ignoring pricks and scratches
                                                  we start a  new life

chosen as Excellant,
Karuizawa 8th
International Tanka
Festival, June 5, 2016

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Haibun



                                                   NOWHERE SPECIAL

After several days of heavy rain, dawn comes up dry. The sun, as it rises, evaporates the beads of water on plants, the puddles in the driveway and the soggy low places on the lawn. Pines gradually lift their rain heavy boughs until they are again well above my head. The breeze is warm; the sky is a spotless blue stretching into infinite space.

                                                    journey’s end
                                                    a country road
                                                    curving nowhere

 A Hundred Gourds, 2014

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Haibun


                                                          GROWING UP

The teenage girl sits on the café stool and orders a latté and a muffin.  A pretty face, smooth and rosy, long light brown hair silky like a cocker spaniel’s.  Her short tee-shirt rides up higher as she moves her arms.  Her tight jeans slip lower, lower, revealing inches of flesh and a peek at where the flesh divides.

She chats on her cell phone.  No pausing to swallow her muffin.  Bite, talk, swallow, talk, drink…  So much to say.  So much to hear.  All the news.  Hurray.  Pass it on.

                                                        a gull in flight
                                                        the speed of its dive
                                                        to snare a fish
 Frogpond, summer 2009

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Haiku

 
                                                       downhill trail
                                                       along a stream
                                                       ...in it
 
 
                                                          lilacs in bloom
                                                          giving the dustmop
                                                          three extra shakes


                                               field of dandelions
                                               thousands of wishes
                                               going unused

A Hundred Gourds
Shiki Kukai
Heron's Nest

Haiku

  weekend getaway coffee on the veranda with a gecko Sense  & Sensibility