Haiga for November

A Hundred Gourds
A Hundred Gourds
Cattails

Tanka for Autumn

the autumn woods

leaves drop with a slowness

in the long shadows

unspoken woods of love

between us

gathering leaves

I can’t decide which to toss

pressed between

waxed paper

they still fade

reaching upward

the heavy limbs of the maple

dimmed by the mist

the eternal patterns of autumn

spread before me

Tanka Society of America

Bottle Rockets

Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society Journal

Haibun

                   

                                                                                  Eden

a drowsy autumn afternoon through the open window distant calls from children at play a slow moving breeze koto music from our Japanese neighbor you beside me asleep after loving your breathing easy and rhythmic

Paradise regained

a bumper crop of apples

in the orchard

CONTEMPORARY HAIBUN ON-LINE

April 2013

Haiga

Haigaonline

featured artist: Rock Challenge

Haibun

       

                                                        A COUNTRY HAIBUN

A murky sky on a late winter day.  The farm country is brown. Rolling pastures of dried brown grass, plowed fields of muddy dirt, corn fields left with a golden brown stubble. Here and there a white farmhouse with outbuildings in either red or white.  Otherwise, the vista is brown, brown, brown.

There is a subdued beauty about the brown hills, their sweep and curve, their valleys and ridges. A smoothness and a calmness in their brown coat.  A solid color, brown.  Dependable, lasting.  On this dull day horses and cows stand quietly in pastures.  The stillness of a painting by a Dutch master, but for the crows. 

                                                            cawing and pecking

                                                            down one hill and up another

                                                            black dots on brown

Bottle Rockets #17, August 2007

Haiku for Autumn

                                                              first glimpse of fall

                                                              what I planned to do . . .

                                                              what I did

                                                             slow line of traffic

                                                             above . . . the V formation

                                                             of geese

                                                             pelting the windshield

                                                             yellow poplar leaves

                                                             swished up by cars

Chrysanthemum 

Stylus Poetry Journal

Dragonfly

Haibun

                                           DRAWING BLOOD   

She is young and willing. How could he, an aging widower, resist her soft and waiting arms, her silky and responsive body? The coming baby is unexpected, a problem for him and his family.  

“My best friend!” his daughter says.

“She’s no better than a whore,” his mother and sisters say. “Worse than marrying Enid, that lazy, frizzy blonde.”

Enid had coped with gin to silence the criticism, until the gin silenced her. And, where had he been all those years?  Cowering in the background, afraid of the harpies’ condemnation. A coward then. A coward now.  

Should he pay her off? Send her away and wash his hands? Even lye wouldn’t clean them or strip away his guilt.

a pile of ash

and cigarette butts–

the night

ticking into dawn

burning memories

revelation

a sharp stab

drawing blood–

can he suture the wound

with repentance and grief?

one bad turn

does not beget another–

there is a new road

free of litter and detours

leading to a second chance

Haibun Today, Tanka Prose, March 2018

Haiga for Autumn

Daily Haiga
Cattails
Chrysanthemum