A brace of haiku to weave into your dreams.
I.
We are sparrows, you and I,
And all the rest of them, too,
Picking at life’s slab of suet
II.
In the garden
An old man rakes gravel
Leaves oblivious
All these seasons
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Tag Archives: acceptance
If you live long enough
If you live long enough, you will see them die.
Longer still, and they fall like spring snow.
There are those who say grief is all second-hand,
That we grieve for ourselves alone
When those too like us prove mortal.
I suppose, for the first fierce blow,
That’s true: we stumble forward, gut-shot,
All death and bewilderment;
But after that? After the long parade begins in earnest?
True, a kind of acceptance sinks in,
A not-quite numbness, a sedation,
A shaking of the head, “Why,
Just yesterday…”
But there are ghosts.
They follow us everywhere,
And in some unguarded moment, a grief descends
Pure and sweet, almost holy,
And wholly devoid of self.
In these moments
We cradle our memories like children,
And all we long for
Is one more touch.
Songs
Some songs are best as background:
Words unheard, rhythm only, harmony guessed,
Like a stray aroma, too vague to catch a grip
On a past long gone,
Like hawk-baiting wrens still thrashing
After the raptors have all gone home.
All the best birds will eat carrion, even prefer it
Leavened and tenderized, not like the fierce will
To hang together you get from raw muscle
Newly riven from the bone, still hoping
For a quickened heart to bring new blood,
Still pushing back at beak and claw.
I try to imagine the silent throat,
Its alarm stilled forever.
Father’s day
I no longer imagine speaking to him
Explaining what I see of life, alert for the slight
Tremor of the eyelid
Some signal, some connection
Once, in a dream, he called me to join him
Held out a crumbling hand
I kicked him away, catching his chest
Exploding with the dust of dying
Hollow as the years of living
I look at an old photograph,
A young officer, impish gleaming eyes,
A girl on either arm
I think we might have come to terms,
The two of us,
But he died somewhere in the old country
Long before his wraith gave me life
Haiku, too
You hear, years later,
The bomb went off after all.
Another drink, you think.
exiles child 