Visionary Heat

I remember an old town on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. You could walk across the river and buy amethyst from the children and hot tacos from their mothers. But at 2 PM every day, the town went silent in the heat. I learned the meaning and purpose of “siesta” from that town.

clinging
to the image of
a day moon

First published in Haibun Today!

Over the Top

The Mogollon Rim in central Arizona is a special place from which to ‘view’ the world. You can hike over 130 miles along the rim, with views of the treetops and clouds changing with your every step. Nature’s gift to us is our own senses with which to enjoy the beauty of an ever changing creation. It was a shift of the earth’s gigantic plates that created each precipice here that we use to view the myriad landscape. Who knows what the next shift will bring.

clouds race
chasing themselves
into new shapes

First published in Haibun Today!

terminal velocity

for H. Gene Murtha

you cant fire a gun at it. it wont die that way. i am not religious. never saw the point. and yet his cancer spreads. it must know that the success it has in him means the end of it. but it cant stop itself. when a poet dies the poetry remains. on the page but still full of whatever life you had right up to the end.

the further i fall into sadness the stronger the memories become. strangely i find solace in the sharp focus this pain creates in my mind. it is as if i can see through the veils of the universe. and there you are with a hint of a smile as your eyes slowly close. as if you were listening to Miles as his trumpet fades. hanging on to that last note.

waning crescent
i can see you
only in my mind

First published in Haibun Today!

two cigar day

i have thought too much. and now it is time to just sit. when the losses pile up it sometimes seems to burden your soul in a special way. not something you can define. not something you can share with others easily. so i will not do that. just smoke my cigars and watch clouds of my own making move away and disappear. i am sad in a way that does not have a healing.

getting older
the friends i have lost
getting closer

First published in Haibun Today!