Haiku 4

Photo Credit: Oran Viriyincy Creative Commons licensed cc-by-sa
Photo Credit: Oran Viriyincy, Creative Commons licensed cc-by-sa

I call his right name
but the decades, and headphones,
inter me to him.

Big band swing music,
hot and cold like my bedroom,
one excuse to smile.

Any fish today? I ask,
the two of them, with their rods,
trudged to the shelter.

To think that, somewhere
sun shines, is to imagine
ice over Ni’ihau.

Train through the wet night,
in the glass I find brown strands
left in my mustache

Power out, Tukwila,
businessman flips umbrella;
he sits singing softly.

The soul in the wheelchair–
and there is always a soul–
wins sprint with the train.

That one Motown song,
still so good, I don’t regret
not knowing the name.

A radio tape,
Toronto after the war,
matched wail and foghorn.

The misbound book,
impervious to any
of my deeper sighs.

Breeze through my left hand,
forty-five years has it traveled
to greet these fingers

The red traffic light
steadfast, far from the island
and its damp footprints.

Top to bottom: fog,
one silent elevator,
one figure murmurs.

Hard-won Internet!
My gateway to planet Earth–
now I can turn my back.

To say “Reaching hands!”
branched from those cherry trunks
ignores their claws.

He cleans his nostrils
with a grey t-shirt, sniffing,
Beatles on his chest.

Slightly-scuffed chalkboard,
almost every letter left
from last night’s dinner.

She’s a writer, too,
a strange country, she calls ours,
then she’s gone upstairs

Two overdue bills
all praise due to bankruptcy,
I’m not in the shit.

Everyone afraid
to talk to each other, but
I thought of the fog.

Did they empty trash
last night? He lost his partial
and he stoops to dig.

“Hate Free Zone!!” –red sign
…but then, as Jonathan says,
you must ask the heart.


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