haiku

A lovely evening for a swim. The tide was low and the water cool, and as I waded out (quite far before it was deep enough to swim) I noticed that the squishy mud I was wading through was warm, quite a bit warmer than the water actually. estuary :: the night gives back what […]

It was the persimmons clinging to the leafless branches of a modest sized tree that first made me fall in love with this house. Now, 23 years later, I’m still no closer to getting used to their exuberant abundance. early sunset a flock of crows winging homeward https://www.instagram.com/p/CIenCWKJkR

one leaf returns to where it came from . . . San Mateo, 2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeYuxhJbxl/?igshid=1jn6rkvs1r282

They are cutting down the pine tree on the corner. It was maybe 80’ tall and almost three feet in diameter, perfectly healthy, an old tree full of years. And now it’s mostly wood chips. Today, for the first time in weeks, the sky is blue, and there is more of it than before. I […]

This is the University of Chicago “Great Books of the Western World” collection, edited by Mortimer Adler and published in the 1950s. My grandmother, a single mom on a budget, scrimped and saved for months to buy this for my father when he was quite young, maybe 12, and it shaped the rest of his […]

10:30am. A layer of smoke overhead so thick it has plunged us back into darkness. The streetlights are on, but no one is out. midday darkness what the raven will tell its children about this day #haiku #haibun #california #smoke https://www.instagram.com/p/CE7K6FzJRwT/?igshid=19jkwj1se9paj

Today’s Haiku (July 28, 2020) for a lover            in 10 million years from now            I cut dahlias                                    Takajo Mitsuhashi

half a moon and a crow’s glide fill the space between skyscrapers

Nevada sunrise a hot-air balloon floats above the brothel

crosswalk all the commuters under the same moon

It’s a challenge to walk in the Tenderloin and not become numb to the world around you. So much squalor and hopelessness. And yet you can still look up from a street corner and see a flock of birds flying out of the sunrise like messengers of the light. Could you see that light in […]

first light — the cat crawls into my lap