purple artichoke
small hawk in the blue birdbath
absolute august
Image by Joe de Sousa via Unsplash.com
Category: Dreams
Haiku for April
high above bracken
fern and foxglove Mother crow
sings her lullaby
Image by Robin Anderson
Quiet Like Sunday
Listen.
Quiet like Sunday on the first of Spring. No traffic, no voices, no airplanes. Only birdsong or a dog barking.
Listen.
Humanity withdraws and the world settles into silence. People in houses gaze through closed windows. They can hear sunlight drip off buildings and roar down empty streets.
Listen.
Image by Harrison Fulop
Skyhawk
In his carefree youth, he and the camera were inseparable. When a daredevil friend took him flying in a one engine plane, the camera went along. They flew off the coast, over the Pacific, getting the bird’s eye of trees, cliffs and sea stacks, cold wind seeping into the cockpit. He clicked the shutter a hundred times. Back on earth, he printed a dozen images. In one, the sepia sea gleams like glass, the sky stretches into silence.
Much later, his adult children gaze at the old photograph, smell naphtha-kerosene and feel the dip and rattle of the Skyhawk.
Image by Chris A Anderson, courtesy of the Estate of Chris A Anderson
CHANGE
When I was young, I jolted down this narrow canyon in my hot jalopy, windows open, inferno winds in my hair. The river below green and cool as it raced me to the sea. On the beach, I ran, jumped in the frigid ocean and shouted for no reason. I drank cheap beer, ate greasy food and slept in the sand.
Today, the canyon is a crucible but I glide along in refrigerated comfort. The river creeps, sluggish and yellow. The wind has died. I drink fine wine but avoid the crowded beach. Have I changed? Or has the world?
Image by Simon Matzinger via Unsplash.com
Koi
looking down
into the koi pond
I see a rainbow reflected
from the sky above
If I look up
will I see
koi swimming
in the clouds?
Image by Elliot Andrews via Unsplash.com
This Beach, In Summer
This beach, in summer, is full of life; Bright human life, pushing all other bits of consciousness aside.
A family group, mostly males, flying dangerously large kites to the squealing encouragement of the females. Elders, walking slowly and frowning at their mates, but mostly perturbed by the shenanigans of youngsters. Volleyballers, runners, sitters, sunbathers, readers. Solitary walkers with bumptious dogs. And a boy who named himself “Siegfried the Dog”. A single child at sunset, bent in contemplation of a seashell as the tide slips quietly out.
Oh for the cold, sandblasted landscape of winter, when we others will have space.
Featured image by Ray Hennessy via Unsplash.com
With Feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers. Emily Dickinson
In the kitchen on a warm afternoon, the breeze blowing in an open door. An unexpected movement near the window. That’s not right.
A flutter and chirp. Distress. Small bird inside the house.
The family dog sleeps in the next room so I rise quietly. A black-capped chickadee stares up at me from the sill. Crooning in the face of terror, I try to catch it. Frantic fluttering and shed feathers. Still not right.
Softly, I open two windows, stand back and hope.
YES! It flies out into its world. That is right.
Image by Brandon @greener_30 via Unsplash.com
haiku
riptide winds
stir the pine trees
scent of spring
yellow azalea
childhood memories
at sunset
a single star
awaits night
Image by Robin Anderson
degrees after sunset (with bats)
civil twilight
turquoise sky
and bats.
nautical twilight
sapphire sky
more bats.
astronomical twilight
onyx sky
(certain they’re there but cannot see)
the bats.
Image by tersius van-rhyn via Unsplash.com