Tag Archives: haiku

Two Consecutive Nights

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Two Consecutive Nights

[fog and ice]

Morning settled on the mountain and decided to stay.
When I passed through it earlier the peak stiffened
the moisture on my windshield into a new vision
neither reflective nor transparent. Now it is still
there! at nineteen hundred feet near sunset
morning is napping, the trees and shrubs and rocks
strangled in its white sheet. This ice-capped time
capsule; the past and future locked in a single seed.

[windy night]

Just last night the world was a bead
of dew caught in winter’s blink:
Now everything is moving. All things
fixed will flap, bend or break
and, even gently pulled free
by its invisible roots and spinning
westward must join a thousand
voices mourning the passing moment

Two Poems About the Moon, one mentioning the moon six times and the other not mentioning the moon at all [new translations]

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Two poems about the moon, one mentioning the moon six times and one not mentioning the moon at all

 

Sky Dream

Li Ho (790-816)

In the sky, that cold toad’s eye weeps.
Between towers of cloud its clarity slants, unstuck,

a jade wheel rolling anew in each drop of dew, glinting
off imaginary immortals on the fragrant path as they meet

and watch dust and ocean trade places beneath the Three Mountains
and even as they blink a thousand years run by like horses. Meanwhile,

way up there, to the toad the great nations are nine wisps
of angry mist and the wide ocean of sorrows a small spilled cup.

 

Still Night, Thoughts

Li Po (701-762)

Moon’s so bright before my bed
I mistook it for frost glowing on the floor.

I lift my head, and old hopes, to that moon,
then back down, eyes full of a dream of home.

 

–translated by Jeff Schwaner

Pondering the New Moon

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Pondering the New Moon

It is not as the full moon shines on us both
that I am missing the walks we took at the edge of dog stars
it’s with each full moon I am aware that you go on
and what the moon looks down upon is what I am missing

After a Moment of Silence for a Sudden Death

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After a Moment of Silence for a Sudden Death

Who are these birds gathering the empty branches
outside my window into a tree again?

Thirty feet above the roofs of a hundred mourning cars
they wick out patterns of mid-afternoon orange and black

that amplify the slanting sun then come back to settle,
at ease, as if already new green leaves protected them.

As if all our thoughts about our departed colleague
had gathered outside to look back at us, prepare

as memory does for flight, disperse to the future
wherever winter thoughts fly to in spring beyond sight

Drinking Sake with You

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Drinking Sake with You

 

Remember that warm anticipation
before the red dust obscured our ease
and the houses blew the sky down?
On this night the walls are so cold and
distant peaks enshrouded, I know what I’ll do:
I’ll sit here nearby. Sip a cup with you
as a star comes out. Let it all settle
until the world is clear again.

On Saying Goodbye

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On Saying Goodbye

 

Trying to catch up with the hills rolling
beneath my feet I’m lost to your light

then at the mountain’s top you are waiting for me
unmoved by the ruckus and dust below

in this valley I’ll hear a bird, catch my breath
then keep running west til the Star River

laps at my feet–who would not climb mountain
after mountain to keep saying goodbye to you?

A poem by my son

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Note: the family is sitting around trying to write verse inspired by music for a contest (“The Writer’s Ear”) sponsored by the local schools. Here is what my six year old son August came up with. It should be further noted that this verse is illuminated in magic marker and that the poem’s narrator is a fire-breathing monster of some kind. But regardless of that, I think the last couplet is a keeper for all of us.
 

I’m tearing down a building
my friend is a skunk

I need a little friend
when I’m in a big fight

Lament for a Black Dog

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Lament for a Black Dog

 

Here’s grief again–summoned by absence
it comes and even when absence flies it stays
taking the shape of the tree nothing is perched on
later this shape appears everywhere

without warning in full form as if it had been there
growing for years and years and we only
now just saw it—how did it grow so big
rooted so deeply in the middle of the road?

Small Song for Time Passing

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Small Song for Time Passing

 

Even below freezing, the slight snow
melts under sun to show hard ground

But behind the tree trunk’s bulk it stays
whitish, slow-blurring across the day’s drift