Tag: walk

January Lament

The path gives way to stone

Winter Walk

The Yuletide lights are packed away,
+++++Grey leaves creep down the street.
The trees at dusk are shades of grey,
+++++Grey sky makes grey complete.

The old man mutters as he scrapes
+++++His trash can to the curb.
The trees complain and sway their shapes
+++++As gusts their peace disturb.

A solitary sparrow picks
+++++A solitary seed
Out from the desiccated sticks
+++++To slake its piercing need.

Thin clouds scud past the frozen moon,
+++++The distant highway drones,
Debris from windy storms lies strewn,
+++++The path gives way to stones.

We’ve reached the nadir of the year,
+++++The time when flowers sleep.
No wish can make them reappear
+++++From their repose so deep.

(2019)

NOTES: We had one of those exciting winter storms last week in the Pacific Northwest, complete with snow and strong winds. The lights flickered, but thankfully, this time the power did not go off. The walking paths were littered with the branches and boughs of many an evergreen. A few weaker trees in the woods were blown completely over. The consolation was that for a few days afterwards, my walks were suffused with the most pleasant fragrance of cedar and pine.

Spring Haiku

What good are alder trees anyway?

Surely alder has
a purpose. But every spring
I sneeze and wonder.

(2019)

Notes: I really thought I had a good plan this year.  Take off for two weeks on vacation at the beginning of March and when I returned, the alder allergy season would be drawing to a close.

Alas, crazy winter weather persisted while I was away and I returned mid-March to a greeting of pollen bursting out in all its glory.

Maybe I’ll just arrange to be elsewhere for all of March next year. A pity because it’s one of the prettiest months here in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Full Moon Haiku

The Super Moon of 2017

Autumn’s last full moon
illuminates my night walk.
No fear of stumbling.

Notes:  The only supermoon of 2017 just happened Sunday night.  We had a bit of fog that — instead of obscuring the light of the moon — only amplified it.  It was so bright you could detect some colors.

Late Summer Sonnet

Late summer's sun has baked the grass to brown

Late Summer’s Sun

Late summer’s sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day,
Soon, autumn’s chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.

And yet I love the shadows’ slanting trace,
The once green grain gone golden in its rows,
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It’s funny, as love ripens how it grows.

The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let’s join above, between, below.
My dear, let’s cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it’s our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.

NOTES:  It’s not really late summer yet, but it feels like it.  It has been hot and dry, giving us the sense of late August when July hasn’t even ended.

The seasons seen to come and go more quickly of late.  Perhaps I’m paying closer attention. Perhaps I realize more summers now lie behind me than still ahead.

Something in the air caused me to pull this sonnet out of the vault today.  I snapped the photo on my late afternoon walk.

 

 

Spring haiku

Early spring -- a great day for a walk ... and poetry

Pink trees everywhere,
So perfect, what could go wrong?
Uh oh … wait … a-choo!

NOTES:  We’re having a late spring here in western Washington.  Cold weather and rain has suppressed the buds and tree pollen that usually afflict me from March 1 to March 30 like clockwork.

I thought, perhaps, I was going to somehow avoid my alder and cedar tormentors this spring.  Silly me.  This week, the rain paused, the temperature rose, and the pollen bloomed.