No Haikus

Words

2011-09-14T13:50:00.000+02:00

You can imagine there is a word for everything somewhere,
in some forgotten language: a stick longer than four meters,
a cave with two entrances, a round bowl made of yellow clay.
And if those words should die, it is certainly because
we no longer need them, because those things no longer matter,
because we have moved on.
And yet so often there is a profound temptation, a taste on the lips
as if to say, there is a word for this, this solitude
this long hour of regret
this anger.
And then, all at once, it disppears:
a flash of color on a dark road
the remnants of a dream

Back after a long hiatus

2011-09-14T13:44:00.002+02:00

And so it begins again....

Hands

2010-05-06T22:21:00.004+02:00

Supposedly universal, this initial fascination
     with all five fingers, the way they move in and out
     and grasp, and create sensations
along the inner surface of your mouth; I remember, too, how lovely
    they were when I first held them, those long fingers, immaculate and
    melancholy, as though sculpted from
    sighs exhaled in a dream.
You watch them move, unaware of all the things they will someday hold:
flowers, bubbles, silver coins, and one day, perhaps,
   some other fingers, some stronger than yours, some rougher;
some smaller, tiny and curled inward
as though hiding the key
to a forgotten garden

Yours

2010-04-24T11:19:00.001+02:00

If one day, catching fire, the monotonous
sky, bitter and replete with
versions of something we call water,
should fall in, or spread outward
in giant clouds, or pour down
in an eruption of a thousand colors
I may not know the path across the desert
I may not know the way across the angry river

but I will find you
and we will walk together
your hand in mine, my hand in yours

Far Away

2010-02-24T14:11:00.015+01:00

They say you are from far away
yet to me you seemed,
all along, so close
Even then, when I knew
only the exquisite flutter of each
of your minuscule fingers,
I imagined their lines and demarcations,
their intricate topography
as the map of a familiar country

Even then, when I pictured you
in those blurred fragments
they were glimpses
of an alien landscape

you were someone else
not in my image

Even now, as I hold you
and whisper
you are mine, you are mine
I think of that distant world
they say you come from
they say you belong to

I can only hope to meet you halfway

carry me with you
I am yours, I am yours

Listen

2010-02-23T15:11:00.002+01:00

Sometimes in the cold wind there is a voice
stronger than a whisper but still, somehow, less palpable
than all the breathless noise
that echoes in the dark room
in the endless hours
between conversations.
Sometimes in the still night there is a sound
that makes us all seem less solitary
(if we listen)
not a word;
just, the tail-end of a dream
too close to forget
and too far away to touch

Talk

2010-02-04T09:32:00.001+01:00

Talk about the moon, the little
lights you thought were stars until,
one by one, they disappeared
like forlorn candles. Talk about
politics, religion, other things
you are unsure of, books with middle parts
forgotten, cousins you have not heard from
since the wedding, since the funeral,
since a Thanksgiving so long ago
you can't remember who was there.
Talk, they say, even if you have nothing
to talk about, because she is watching,
in awe of everything
because she is there, waiting
to listen

Vast

2010-02-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I come across a word I don't know:
storge, or galingale, or legerdemain
It isn't so surprising,
that in all the hundreds of thousands of words
I should encounter, from time to time,
the unfamiliar.
More, that in the vast night
over the dark waves
we hear the flapping of a white sail
the timbre of a human voice
and find, always, somehow,
something to talk about

Star

2010-01-18T14:07:00.000+01:00

Another long mile. You breathe;
the air is full of dust, the moon
achingly round.
All the words that once seemed important
are now gone, like the bitter
November leaves.
You yearn for the faraway light
of the nameless star
flickering in the dark sky,
both inviting
and devastatingly vast

Sleep

2010-01-12T18:26:00.000+01:00

Sleep, now, in the midnight garden
under the shadeless winter trees
Sleep, now, to the whispered rhythm
of the frozen alabaster breeze
Sleep in the warmth of the amber fire
Sleep to the voice that drifts in from afar
Sleep, now, till the morning rises
Sleep in the light of the silver star

The Imagined World

2010-01-07T16:47:00.007+01:00

Sometimes you speak in a dream
And when I go to you
you cannot remember
what woke you:
a peculiar voice
a sound in the hall
or a burst of silver
in the darkness.
Sometimes I think you imagine
the world as it was before you
before us
a glimmer in the black sky
a distant memory
that returns each night
as you drift to sleep

Places We Have Never Been

2009-12-21T12:13:00.004+01:00

We look at maps of places we have never been
sometimes in frustration, sometimes with regret
You--thinking, there is another country we will never see
now that we have children, now that we're no longer free
I suppose I tell you about such
and such person I know
who moved to Africa with two children
or took his son on a trek through the Himalayas
or his daughter to Bolivia.
But sometimes, I just watch from the hall
as you, your arms wrapped loosely around
your son's small body,
read to the light
of an illuminated globe
covered with names of places that, to him, are nothing
but the names of irregular, impossible shapes
and made-up mountain ranges,
and think:
this is a world you could never have imagined

Whisper

2009-12-20T16:14:00.003+01:00

All the immediate noises die away.
Nothing left, then, but the low,
forceful rhythm
of a faraway orchestra
(a sudden parade)
so distant that you are not sure
if it is real or imagined
so that when, at last,
in the uncertain silence
you hear a whisper
it seems at once urgent and impossible
like a voice in a dream
deep and sonorous
speaking of things
that are lost
or have never been

Breath

2009-12-14T14:47:00.002+01:00

Winter's long breath
settles along
the grey earth
in immaculate beads--
no longer water,
not yet snow:
a whisper

Dream

2009-12-10T15:26:00.005+01:00

First, a dream:
the sudden sound of water,
far away, quiet--
yet people speak of tempests,
typhoons,
a growing storm.
Still, no deluge
just a few soft drops
of water:
rain.
That is the way of dreams
they rise and recede
they disappear
dancing to the rhythm
of your gentle breath

Wednesday poem

2009-12-09T23:28:00.000+01:00

no sitter today
a toddler on a rampage
this is not a haiku

The Sea

2009-12-08T15:06:00.009+01:00

There are a thousand things to watch besides the sea:
passers-by, airplanes, long-tailed kites
wrestling upward in reckless maneuvers.
There are things less constant: fireflies,
comets, uncertain bursts
of silver light.

And yet we walk, over and over,
to the jagged edge

to watch the shapeless waves:
imagining that, beyond,
there might be, still,
some undiscovered country--
a place we cannot name

to watch the dark sea move:
as vast and boundless
as a forgotten dream

Away

2009-12-07T11:27:00.003+01:00

Away with the water, away with the sea
Out with the last tattered flyaway tree
We will stand ankle-deep in a tide of farewells
to listen for shipwrecks, or cyclones, or bells
The driftwood will wither, the sand will blow free
Away with the water, away with the sea

Persephone Danced

2009-12-05T23:58:00.000+01:00

A far-off sound --
a dirge. She danced
to music she could barely hear
beneath the fog of voices.
She moved
to the rhythm of her own breath,
at once warm and bitter
the perfect circle of a pirouette
She danced:
and when he called her name
she did not turn
and she did not look away

Tree

2009-12-04T15:16:00.000+01:00

You watch as though you think
there might be something undiscovered in it,
a simple maple:
slender, long-armed,
blown bare in the second storm
of a mild winter. There is a rightness
to its name: monosyllabic, plain, wide on the lips.
It is a tree without exception.
And yet you, through the sliding door, observe
as though something amazing might emerge
from the damp yellow bark of a garden tree
as though aware that in the solid wood
there is a secret hollow,
a whisper that once,
in the thick of a December night,
beckoned you,
calling:
"Dance!"