the shallow stream skirts
softened edges of a field —
emptiness surrounds
steady retreat on a path
through morning grey and stillness
Tanka #5
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Tag Archives: poetry
Winter Haiku #4
orion hangs low
birdsong presages light
of weeks approaching
Simple Day
The circles from our meeting
have rippled out
across the years,
growing faint for a time
from interruption,
and then stronger still,
rolling though seasons,
gardens and snows
and the voices of our children,
over quiet mornings
and hinted joy.
Let me kiss your forehead
and touch your hand,
look outward toward the sea
for just a moment
with a half smile —
another wave on this
simple day.
Winter Haiku #3
stalks of wild grasses
reach skyward through drifting snow —
brittle remembrance
Worn into the Fabric
A pair of corduroy pants
sit folded on the ironing board,
their faded blue almost grey
in the early morning light.
They have passed in turn
from each of our children
to the next,
stories of young lives
worn into the fabric.
The ridges have been
diminished by the seasons
in places where they have bent
for a doll or a puddle,
or knelt for a story,
leaving nearly smooth,
but still patterned,
softness.
They are now too small
for any of our family —
yet my wife has pinned
a piece of cloth,
edges folded and ironed
neatly for sewing,
over a hole in the knee.
She’ll stitch them carefully together
one evening as we sit.
I haven’t asked her why —
perhaps she hopes our youngest
may wear them one more time,
or there is something else
her patching might repair.
Tanka #4
the old sentry watches
over mist and heavy water
weathered by time yet
outlasting the faded road
no escape from loneliness
Tanka #3
hundreds of winters
have loosened the barriers
between wind and warmth —
the coldest mornings leave gifts,
delicate intermingling
Winter Haiku #2
breathless light struggles —
long shadows arrive early
in the day’s passing
—
I feel like I’ve been writing around the edges recently. Circling around words that need to be expressed but aren’t ready to be committed. My notebook is littered with opening lines and untitled strings of paragraphs that don’t quite go together. This haiku managed to emerge complete, perhaps a part of circling inward. It is, in any event, one step next to another step, and what this moment holds.
Exhalation
I have been holding my breath again,
not leaving you much choice
but to wait.
This has always been my first response
when frightened —
but you learned this years ago.
I feel
your yearning
to speak
after the children have been tucked in
(we wouldn’t be interrupted)
and as the tea kettle births
steam onto the darkened window;
your abiding
in the deep quiet
(so ripe)
that hours later
envelopes us in our bed.
But exhalation
gives life to fear —
merely scratching out a poem,
lightly and in pencil,
would risk too much.
So you bear the silence for us,
even as our skin touches,
the cold back of your thigh
reminding me
you are there,
giving me everything
just by lying still,
waiting for me to breathe.
Margin Notes
Thumbing through the copy of
Merton’s Birds of Appetite
she found on our living room shelf,
my wife asks me who it had belonged to,
curious about the writing in the margins.
I look and recognize the hand of an old friend;
we used to talk about Zen and Shakespeare.
She wonders if I ever hear from her —
but I have grown so much quieter,
and I can’t bear to intrude
upon spaces so large.
What would I say?
bussokuseki 