Tag Archives: life

Time

Posted on by
Reply

There is only time

it’s not yours to give, take, waste, or spend.
You cannot pass, tell, save, or bide it;
You cannot make it, it will never end.
You can’t stop, have, lose, or find it.

It will not expire, crawl, creep or drag;
there is no past, double, quick or run.
No good times, sometimes, old, or lag;
it can’t be told by clock, or bell, or sun.

You cannot kill it, poison, stop, or shoot it;
there is no hang time, short or long, or nigh.
You can’t restart, replay, reverse, reboot it.
There is only time. It will not die.

You will die.
Time will fly.

Friday haiku 61

Posted on by
Reply

An unusual posting for me. I wrote this haiku, or haibun, I suppose,  in Spanish while in Mexico, and translated it into English. Among other things, I got a new insight into translation. It’s no easier just because you wrote the original.


Fuera de la madrugada
salta el sol
corazón palpitante

Out of the darkness
leaps the sun
like a beating heart

Friday haiku 58

Posted on by
Reply

The wind blows
I blow back
Was that a shrug?

Reunion

Posted on by
Reply

After hours of fitful turning,
Georgie fell to sleeping,
The rasping cough too strenuous
The light too ambiguous,
His eyelids too large to will open

In his dream,
All that ever was and all that shall be
Converged on him, and he saw the limitless
And held it close to his heart

He saw the child’s Christmas, one with
Rubble-strewn streets and bomb-laced
Windows, the spanking cry of new-born
Wrinkled joy, one with tear-washed dead lips
Of a life, spent and discarded, brushed aside

He saw the stars, new and old, explode eternally,
Worlds awash with life and others bereft of it
And tiny, forlorn pulses in ancient crevices,
Which would have been long forgotten
Had anyone ever known of them.

He could see them all, and all seemed dear,
The sublime and the petty,
The ecstasy and the torment,
Down to the final finalness, indistinguishable
From the beginning

Even down to the last corner of the vastness,
Down to the last lonely planet
Where Georgie lay on the gurney,
The sheet pulled over his unblinking face.

Reflections on a park bench in autumn

Posted on by
Reply

Time is winning this game,
score tied, one to infinity,
the last stop on this old trolley line
looms ahead, witless, wanton.

It’s cold, let’s face it, but
I can’t help loving the slatted
sunlight, the already tattered leaves
flinging themselves underfoot.

I may be hopelessly anchored
here in this silty backwater
astride these gifts of algae
given long ago,

but I am surely more than just a worm
through time. I sink, I swim, all a-whim,
the winds washing the stained earth.
Still, there are fates involved, I’m told.

Dreams, like phantoms, peer out
from under sheaves of light.
Live with ghosts, and before long,
you begin to feel thin yourself.

A sparrow lands at my feet.
All I can do is stare dumbly.
“I’m so sorry,” sighs the breeze,
“May I do it again?”