Election Year Haiku
Fall comes on too strong/ Branches up in summer’s skirt/ Before she thinks no/
Fall comes on too strong/ Branches up in summer’s skirt/ Before she thinks no/
It’s after eight in the evening, and in this antique light, the Queen Anne’s Lace along the roads watches the sinking sun – hundreds of tatted blooms close up like praying hands, like thousands of empty teacups drained and set upon the sideboard of the day. In the morning they’ll open again to catch the … More That Summer of the Pandemic, It Was All Falling Apart, It was All Coming Together
Chickadees, snowshine, tourmaline skies; Blue jays, jack pine, solitude mine.
On the last Saturday of my 40s, I drive alone to Fish Creek to take the Sunset Bike Trail at Peninsula State Park. It occurs to me as I review the map, then fold it into small rectangles and put it into my back pocket, that if I live to be 96, it’s a decade … More 9.6 Miles in September
Overcast skies cast over / this lake, my unquiet mind / the fish dart away /
One common tern hovers high above Lake Michigan, then dives under the waves and back again, its path a ragged stitch from sky purpling like a bruise into water smooth as a mirror, and then back to sky again, pulling together heaven and earth like the closing of a weary eye.
Cathedral pines rock – in this ocean of green waves – I roll through and drown.
I. Shady Lane barefoot at twilight we play Ghosts in the Graveyard vanishing in dark II. Rook cards slap on the porch after-dinner Manhattans kids drunk with freedom III. Beckoning June is ever-dusk fireflies wink in gangly grass as I pedal home
Fall wind scatters flocks/ Birds and leaves, from branch to sky/ Have we stem, or wing?
It’s a Thursday in May after five when I swing into the Piggly Wiggly with two bikes on the back of my SUV, and the dog inside; The woman slicing my deli ham struggles with the wrapper on the summer sausage, limps like her hip is bad, too; she paces, trapped behind the glass cage; … More Crivitz Piggly Wiggly Philosophy