Haibun

The Casbah

Exotic Morocco.  Heat and odors. Sweet flowers, spices, dust, overflowing sewers, diesel fumes. A desiccating hot wind that pulls moisture from one’s eyes.  Ship whistles, shouting voices, car horns, motors, riveting engines, music.  Before and behind, hidden and in plain view.

imagining

veils and tambourines

sounds of rock and roll

"Be your guide?"  A young boy tugs at us.  "Casbah.  Guaranteed fun."  We say no and take a taxi.  "I show you," he says, waiting for us at the entrance to the Casbah.  His own taxi, perhaps?  Or a magic carpet?  We relent in the presence of such mysterious powers and cleverness. 

The Casbah! A maze of shops, stalls and living quarters, as well as a mosque or two.  Thick with people. Women weaving in doorways, helped by rheumy eyed children.  Mostly silent as they work.  

                                   weaving our way up
                                        to the top of the Casbah-

                                    this desert het

Mohammed pushes us past some shops, pulls us into others.  "Buy, buy."  Whispered conferences in the corner with the owner.  We buy a leather hassock.  "Good bargain," we are assured. 

                              our twelve -year old guide

                              pushing aside hot crowds-

                              promises of mint tea

Cooler at the top.  A plaza with an open tea room and street performers.

toothless snake charmer                                                   pauses to grin at the crowd  

 the waiting cobra

coiled in a basket,

the cobra's eyes

not quite closed

The end of our tour..

our Moroccan guide

looking cool in his long robe

hand out for a tip

Raw Nerve

Haibun

Dog Days

The very hot days of summer, usually late in July, the time when people suffer and dogs can go crazy. That's the popular belief carried on down through centuries. Actually, the origin goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. To them, the "dog days" were when Sirius, the dog star, appeared in the heavens, coinciding with the hottest days of summer.  They are here now, and our suffering dog has his own way of coping.

His tongue hangs out all day. He pants continuously. Sleeps wrapped around a sweating toilet bowl. Doesn't want to go out, and, when he must, wants in immediately. He slobbers water on the floor in his haste to cool his thirst. He looks at me with sad eyes as if I could do something. I give him some of my ice cream. Happy for the moment, he retreats back to the toilet bowl.

two- week heat wave

cooling in the fridge

salads and underwear

Presence

Haiku in Lavander

cutting brush—

over the Russian sage

bees power-up

lilacs

spilling over the fence

the neighbor's anger

freshly plowed field

purple wildflowers

outside the fence

Haiku Lines

Bottle Rockets

Haibun

THE SUMMER OF 2012     

The village is a piece of small-town America, a one traffic-light town, a main street lined on both sides with honey locusts. Tubs and window boxes filled with flowers. Old brick buildings. Neat houses and well tended lawns and gardens.  A variety of shops.  Once. Not now.  Not this summer.  For sale signs in front of many houses.  Some empty, the gardens and grass left to go wild, wither and die. Empty store fronts. The pharmacy gone.  The general store gone.  A restaurant gone. A card and gift shop, antique shop, real estate, children’s shop, food shop.  Gone.

People come up with ideas and plans.  A community playhouse in an unused building. A housing development on the edge of the village where stands a deteriorating girls’ school.  A lot of talk and no action. A lot of questions and no answers.  We wait.

white hot sky–

with an ancient dance

we pray for rain

HAIBUN TODAY, 

Corning Glass Haiga

                    

                                         



                                     

Haigaonline Featured Artist

Haiku

tulips aplenty

more than I hoped

more than I planted

soft dampness
the silken feel of spring 
on my arms

a gentle breeze

tickling my senses

first peonies

Kukai

Chrysanthemum

Cattails

Haibun

ESTEPA, SPAIN

A quiet drive from Granada to Seville.  We reach Estepa, a village existing in defiance of gravity, as if by sheer stubbornness.

                                                                             the brown hills—

                                 white stucco houses anchored

                                 with olive trees

A dazzling light bounces off the white surfaces. No cantina or café visible. Hot cobblestones and cool gardens behind stone walls with iron gates and tinkling fountains. Geraniums as big as bushes, oleander bushes as big as trees. Food smells from an alley, the clink of cutlery and the murmur of muffled voices, but empty streets.  Not even a dog or a cat.

                                   siesta

                                   our footsteps seeming louder

                                   the further we walk

A sign:  Mercado. A peek through the open door. Dark and cooler inside.  More like someone's home than a market.  A few chunks of hard dry goat cheese on a counter, bottles of water as warm as the air.

                                                                                  the hot shade—

                                     eating bread and oranges

                                     and red dust 

Bottle Rockets

Haibun

REFLECTIONS ON A VILLAGE IN ITALY   

The village is old, similar to the birthplace of my ancestors, one like many others that form my ethnic and cultural past.

rugged hills

shadow the stone houses—

tripping on cobbles

The family name is not here in this village, but that is not important.  The faces are the same.  My father's mother, frail, dressed in black, with white hair pulled tightly into a bun, is here.

searching for family—

the stooped old woman

with a distant smile

My mother's father, sturdy, full-chested, with a bushy mustache and sunburned skin on his bald head is here.  I see him again as a young man with curly black hair and strong muscles unloading barrels from a truck.  Other young men with their laughing mouths and casual swagger 

standing on the corners and in the coffee bars are my uncles and cousins.  The black-eyed women pushing fat olive skinned babies, the small boys in their short pants and dirty faces, the skinny girls with their faded dresses. All are my mothers and fathers, now young again.

                                                        a boy with big ears

skidding around a corner

a vespa spews fumes      

The images raise a few hackles on the back of my neck.  It is as if I have come home.

Stylus Poetry Journal