And she was still here
Sipping nectar for her trip
End of summer gift
Category Archives: life up here
Haiku for a Saturday afternoon
Dog rests on my foot
Gray rain and cooling to fall
Hummers are still here
Haiku for a sunny Friday
Few bugs eager dogs
Humid air stuck somewhere else
Out the door to woods
Mystery of their arrival
When I sing, music puts its hands around my heart
My words think tears are a puddle to splash through shoeless
Color often stops my breath, and I am held its prisoner
A sudden memory might need release
Any of these call up tears, and I don’t mind.
When the signal comes they might glide to me in a waltz,
or whirl up on the skirts of a wild mazurka.
Better yet, ride in on the smoothness of an alto sax.
Waiting
She pried my eye open, brilliant Venus did,
balanced just above the pine spikes, tired
of waiting for me to get on with dreaming.
Around her clear sky at last, meteor showers
done, still hours away from light. Deaf to her
message I went back to bed and snoring dogs,
to dream of love that would not hear my voice
leading me across a bog on floating stones,
until I balked, and jumped away to solid ground.
She knew this one was on its way, and did not
want it left benignly in the deepest part of sleep,
but felt vividly, and have me wake grateful for escape.
Late present
The moon brought me a gift
last night, before the
solstice rain moved in.
I left the crispness
of my northern woods
to walk the dew off grass again
with you. It’s late, the
house lights dark, the night
all midsummer lushness,
bell buoys ringing softly.
We know the way by feel
across the lawns and
down the hill to home,
but cannot pass the garden
with its flat topped walls.
We sit, shoulders touching,
stone still warm, and let our
breath find a rhythm together
after days apart. Then on
our way again, to soft
lamp light on varnished
wood, and pick up where
we were before the first
mosquito bit.
This morning I still feel
your hands, your skin on mine,
and smile, not caring.
And Peggy Sue
They called him Crane, not Ichabod
but the bird. I’d see him
Saturday nights at the tap room
where he won big money
throwing darts, bony fingers
on a different circuit
from the rest of him as he drank.
Never pretty in daylight — when
drunk, his angles seemed smoothed
out, almost vaselined. The dim lit
corners left the knife scar
on his neck alone, a dull flash
of on-off michelob blinking onto his baldness.
On this night college boys found the bar,
and while the rest of his townie pals
shunned the clueless preps, he
fought them at the dart board one by
one, with his dead aim, metal sinking
into cork almost soundless, like a perfect
dive knifes into chlorined blue. Always
left them broke, their egos bleeding out.
The drunker he got, the better he played,
groove sunk cheeks split by a grin.
He took them all, keening
Peggy Sue softly
between each throw.
Seeing them off
Today they are still here,
and I am too, in late September.
My hummingbird pair. One darts in
to feed, the other perches
drinking deeply, tipping her head back
to let the nectar slide.
I feel that energy sweet and cool
down my throat.
Their absence looms, a large bell
with muffled clappers tolling
unopposed, reddening the trees,
exiling light, ushering in cold.
Lately the question, will they
visit me again, or will there be
someone else looking out my window
twelve months on?
Each year it is harder let them go,
as if there were a choice.
The morning watch
He sits behind the screen,
the sun’s minute hand
remaps his curves in warmth.
With not much else to do
his morning’s work is
out there, living traffic
he will watch and note.
Force marched ants in
single file, small brown toads,
leaf rustles out of sight,
the swooping zizz
of dragonflies.
A hummingbird returns
to drink, then preen. This
makes him smile. Even they
must stop and rest.
The small world quiets, starts to
wait for shade, when high sun
moves away, raptors drafting
on its currents. He sees
and understands. Feeling
stiff he’s up to find another
patch of sun. A whoofing sigh,
then head on paws he sleeps.
Flat light early
Some mornings
present themselves
before my second eye opens,
no warmth, flat light,
featureless gray untrimmed,
not even stray rain clouds.
Tight woven canvas
hangs edge to edge
at the top of the sky,
and the living world
makes a new plan,
carrying on oblivious.
My patient dogs
don’t care a fig about the sun,
arriving bedside to present
mouth-damp slippers,
and we go out
to open up the day.
Night Paint
Four windows float the bed,
light outside and some in.
Ground opals bounced off snow,
that four month guest.
The moon is almost full,
curtained behind snow-melt fog.
Later, when the woods are green
there will be fireflies.
Haiku for (cyber) Monday morning sans notes
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