My old banjo clock used to run for eight days straight, but now it stops after only a few hours. I carry it to Rick’s Timeshop, where several hundred ticking, tocking voices mark eternity. While Rick peers into the innards behind my clock’s face, one of the cuckoo clocks on the wall chirps out the hour, accompanied, surprisingly, by the sound of water running over stones. Thoreau’s dictum—time is but the stream I go a-fishing in—rises to the surface of my mind.
cuckoos
counting out the hours
of my life
by a babbling brook—
I steal a dipperful of silver
~Haibun Today 8:2, June 2014
these bobolinks
migrating home—
sojourners
in a Sabbath meadow
with Emily and me
~Skylark 1:2, winter 2013
calling
the hermit thrush calling
myself. . .
the answer comes
in a tongue I cannot speak
~The Bamboo Hut 1:1, August 2013
I wake
to the first scent
of lilac . . .
sixty years ago,
six hundred miles away
~Atlas Poetica 15, July 2013
orb webs
suspended
between power lines . . .
dreamlets evaporate
in the morning sun
~The Bamboo Hut 1: 2, Jan. 2014
Among the haunting images of animals—bison, bear, and spotted horse—painted on the walls of caves, human handprints catch the eye. Careful measurement reveals that most are the hands of women. Could they be maker’s marks?
firelight
dancing on the walls
the sister
I never had
touches my hand
~Skylark 2: 1 summer 2014
I am happy to announce that as of the Winter 2014 issue of Skylark: A Tanka Journal, I will be the Reviews and Features Editor. The submissions window for that issue is June 1 -- August 1. For details on how to submit books for review or articles for consideration, please click here.
a dragonfly
on the tip of a reed
emerges
in a mirror universe—
its reflection flies first
~Atlas Poetica 14, March 2013
