October 27: 1-5 (Listening Wind)

1.

spending time
the way the wind
spends breath

2.
this catalog of breezes
making a distinction
between the air

3.
don’t stop blowing
wind
keep turning my pages

4.
my lips chafed
by the wind
I stop trying to explain myself

5.
inside the cyclone
my soul free to repeat itself
indefinitely

 

 

or

 

1.

spending time the way the wind spends breath

2.

this catalog of breezes making a distinction between the air

3.

don’t stop blowing wind keep turning my pages

4.

my lips chafed by the wind I stop trying to explain myself

5.

inside the cyclone my soul free to repeat itself indefinitely

 

 

_______________________________

 

The world here has been trying to turn itself inside out the last couple of days. It’s a little frightening and a little beautiful. Everything, including the people, is torn between resisting the wind and yielding to it. This is me, yielding.

I’m not sure what these want to be, or how much space they want to occupy. They’re mutable, it seems. They could be haiku. They could be some kind of meditation. They could stay with me, or they could take the next gust out of town.

The sun and the leaves and the wind are almost enough to live on today. But I ate breakfast anyway. I believe in eating a good breakfast, even when the world is blowing away.

 

June 7: 3-6 (Scottish Play sequence)

child memorizing
Shakespeare
bird calls repeat

in the living room
Macbeth vacillates
microwave beeps

neighborhood lawnmowers
our favorite lines
in unison

if the assassination
could trammel up the —
cats yawn

*

The teenager is taking on the persona of a Scottish king this summer. The house is full of bloody and inimitable words.

June 3: 4 (Chipmunk Calls Repeat)

chipmunk calls repeat
repeat all summer
outside my window repeat

*

Yeah, okay, so this is a particularly not-stunning photograph. It looks better close up, is all I have to say. And doesn’t the rope there add some kind of artistic interest? Oh, never mind. Just read the damn haiku.

Edited: I changed the picture. At least now you can tell it’s a chipmunk and not some kind of hairpiece lying on our lawn. Doesn’t he look adorable? Yeah. You can have him.