Tanka

 the sky above

between eastern mountains

and the western ocean

from brush  fires and sunset

the same red

Red Lights

Tanka

 a soft breeze

carrying a faint sweetness

I think of you

as you tend the roses

you so loved

Moonbathing

Tanka Prose

THE DIG   

Day 1:

 

An orange earth digger, jack hammers, men with shovels in yellow vests and hard hats —all here to replace a faulty water line. Get my car out of my garage and park in the visitors’ parking, I’m advised. No need. Decide to cancel plans made earlier. Will go out tomorrow.  Bad decision, that.  As holes gets deeper, dirt mounds get higher. No way into my condo, no way out.  After some hand wringing, a path is cleared. Can now get to mailbox across the road. However, there is no mail because the mail truck cannot get past the equipment and barricades.  At the end of the day, a gaping hole at the bottom of my driveway covered over with a flimsy board and blocked by orange and white bars attached to orange cones.  Oh, my! How they do love orange.

 

lives lived,

long before memory,

deeply buried

till a random hoe or spade

frees a shard of mystery

 

Day 2:

 

More digging. A new area under my window. Out comes the grass. Out comes the spirea bush. Out come my white lilies which took two years to bloom. I look down and see only a hard hat. China appears to be the destination.  The earth digger extends its teeth, bites into new territory,  chews its way along the road past the next condo unit. Clunk, clunk. clunk. The show is only minimally mesmerizing. Time for a relaxing cup of herbal tea. Choking sounds from the faucet. Water has been turned off. Fortunately, I have a kettle full of water. With my tea and a book, I retreat to the living room and a comfy chair away from the clunking of the earth digger.  At the end of the day, there are two deep craters and a long trench, but I have water.

 

digging through time

finding bits of this and that

trash and treasures

writing tales of how it was,

how we think the pieces fit

Day 3

 

The  hole under my window is filled in. The hard hats move down along the trench. The earth digger returns to crater number one. It gets wider, deeper. A workman tells me water will be off.  I fill the kettle.  I will have my tea.  Didn’t think about the cleaning woman due in a couple of hours.  Should have filled buckets. She arrives, having walked from visitors’ parking.  Turns on faucet. Sputters. Spits. Hisses. Water still off.  Just dust and vacuum I tell her.  She takes two buckets and talks to the hard hats. One stalwart fellow leaps the trench, takes the buckets and goes down the road,  past the trench, and returns with water.  Cleaning of my condo continues. Meanwhile, hard hats take a lunch break. Begin to wonder how long will my driveway end at the lip of a canyon. Begin to wonder if I should send out a SOS to my family.  Three o’clock. Hard hats have been moving rapidly this past hour.  No need to alert family. The driveway crater is filled and dirt leveled. I can take my car out. The trench under my window is covered with boards and marked with orange cones.  Piles of rocks are loaded into a truck and hauled away. The earth digger is parked and the road is quiet. 

 

tagged and labeled

each item in a ledger

nothing left ignored

history in a  bowl,

a trinket or a cup

 

Day 4

 

All quiet on the cul-de-sac. No earth digger, no hard hats. Nothing. Nada. The dig is a work in progress, and progress is slow.

 

showcased in museums

photographed and discussed

the past brought forward

to question and to learn

and find a better way

Cattails June 2023

Haibun

Brief Encounter in St. Augustine  

Days of walking, sightseeing, attending meetings, eating. Tired and hot, I sit on a stone bench in a square near the old town. Soon I have company. He could be forty. He could be fifty. He’s thin, bearded, brown as a coconut, disheveled. I smile and say “Hello.” He says “Hello.”  I see he is in pain . . .the way he got off his bike, the way he massages his limbs, the way he stretches as if that could lessen his pain.

 

a gentle breeze

cooling my discomfort

refreshing my mind

opening my eyes

to another life

 

He tells me about being knocked from his bicycle five days earlier by a car which sped away. Nothing broken, but left with pain in every bone. Has no money to buy the meds prescribed. I give him two over-the-counter pain killers. “God Bless, he says and swallows them. He talks about his life. One of eight children in Indiana, lost his job when factory closed, kicked out of his sister’s house because of drinking. Been on the road 13 years, hitching rides, mostly walking. Walked from Daytona to St. Augustine and has a job as a dishwasher. “Nice people,” he says. “Kept me on after missing work when I was in the hospital. But can’t pay me ‘till next week.”  

 

the old/young man

with his home in a pack

shares his free shade

and calls me a saint

when I give him a ten 

Drifting Sands  

Haiku

summer residents

their all-night voices

deep in the woods

Cattails

Haibun

Lunch with Grandma and Grandpa 

 

Grandpa waits at the kitchen table, while Grandma and I go out to the backyard.  We gather the short pale green leaves of a plant before flower buds form and swell on coarse stems and open into the yellow curse of most gardeners who are unaware of the plant’s  tasty possibilities.

 

dandelion fluff

a warehouse of wishes

let loose in the wind

 

The thin, tubular blades have a slightly sharp fragrance, which becomes stronger as we clip, tug and pull up small white bulbs, leaving fingers dirt smeared and aromatic. Back inside the kitchen, we wash the greens, the muddy sludge swirling down the drain. I shake them, my small hand bobbing vigorously next to Grandma’s large, rough one. We pat dry them on a towel from the old country, hand woven from wild hemp with strands of brown coursing thru the pale fabric.

 

treasured objects—

the next generation

hasn’t a clue

 

Grandma chops the greens and a clove of garlic, places them in a  bowl with some lemon juice and olive oil, sprinkles on salt and pepper and gives them a toss with a wooden spoon. She fills three plates with the greens, adds chunks of hard cheese, slices of salami and crusty bread. She puts the plates on the table, along with glasses, a carafe of water and a bottle of Grandpa’s home-made wine.  He pours water into my glass, adds a little wine, and tells me to “mangia.” 

 

warm breezes 

lazy memories

slip into dreams

Drifting Sands 

 

Haiku

May morning

she colors her trees

bubble gum pink

Acorn

 

Haibun

    THE SEYCHELLES

 

While my husband attends an international conference I explore the hotel.  Mahe, the largest of the islands, has everything you would expect on a tropical paradise.

 

                a salamander,

                green against the pink wall

                waiting…

 

Seen from our balcony, an expanse of rough lawn and the glinting Indian Ocean.   Day and night, the repetitive sound of the surf and rattling palm fronds.

 

                inside, outside,

                the voices of insects—

                French tourists next door

 

A thatched roof on the hotel lounge and open on three sides. One evening during dinner there is a power outage.

 

                the scented darkness—

                luminescent waves

                crash the reef

 

When the conference is over, we fly to Praslin.  Less populated and with a slower pace.

 

                an empty cove—

                footprints in the sand

                ending at the water

 

Home of the coco de mer, the large double coconut shaped like part of a woman's anatomy thought to be an aphrodisiac.  Also, home of the giant tortoise.

 

                eye to eye

                with a tortoise in the road—

                we drive the verge

 

We take a boat to La Digue, an even smaller and more remote island with dirt roads and no cars.  Wagons pulled by oxen or bicycles, the favored modes of transportation.  Chickens wander the roads.  Lush greenery, the changing blues of the ocean and sky, the myriad colors of flowers, birds in their resplendent feathers and their various songs… all are the riches of the island. 

 

 Perhaps there had been a plan to encourage more tourists and development.  Now… small cottages, once the dream vacation homes of the hopeful, slowly being absorbed back into the greenery. This natural, unspoiled island pleases me more than the developed ones.  The islanders may feel differently, as every day they are reminded of what could have been.

 

                still standing

                just a chimney

                girded with vines

 

Yellow Moon