Three Haiku

Asked my students to try writing some haiku based on a field trip we took. (Called the poems hike-u since we were going on a hike.) Allowed them, and me, to give them titles that might work with poems, although traditional haiku usually don't have titles. Here are three I wrote on the bus ride to the hike.

       On the Highway

     Bulldozer faces
     backwards on the flatbed truck.
     Hello and good-bye.
                
            Equinox

        The first day of spring.
        The nursery is barren,
         But the snowdrops bloom.

             Passing Gas

         Cars carry dead beasts
         in their bellies, leaving us
         to choke on their farts.

 

 

Traffic Signals

Another meditation on my morning commute.

                Traffic Signals

Those that glow green as a distant promise
are bound to turn by the time you're near.
That’s why remote red lights are welcome sights
since any change would be an all clear.
Sudden yellow, though, is a subtler show:
for some it means stop, for others – go, go , go.

Magic

A couple days ago someone asked me if I knew a poem about the value of mindful preparation and repetition, about how practice makes perfect.  I couldn't think of one, so here's one I wrote, imperfect as it is.

                 Magic

The trick is to make the effort
look effortless, to rehearse it
right a hundred time so it goes
right once, to divert everyone’s
attention but your own from the task
at hand so while they’re looking up
your sleeve, you’re pulling a well-groomed
rabbit from a well-worn hat
and the audience gasps as all that
hard work vanishes into thin air.

The Poet's Pledge

A while ago there was a poetry contest involving poems about medicine and physicians.  I did not enter the contest but started thinking of an oath poets might take.  The first line occurred to me and then I finally got around to writing a poem.  (I found out that the phrase "first, do no harm" does not actually appear in the Hippocratic oath, but everyone thinks it does, so I kept the first line.)


    

                                The Poet’s Pledge

                                                         after Hippocrates

                                            First, do some harm.
                                            Rip out your reader’s heart
                                            and put it where she thought
                                            her brain belonged.
                                            Reroute some neurons
                                            and make him smell a sunset,
                                            taste the wave’s roar,
                                            and see the shape
                                            of a sparrow’s song.

                                            Next, turn the rest of the world
                                            upside down and inside out
                                            so skyscrapers become
                                            stalactites in the earth’s core,
                                            the stars drown in the sea,
                                            dolphins swim the sky,
                                             and one man’s ceiling
                                             becomes some woman’s floor.

                                             And finally, make us see
                                             this is the way things
                                             already were
                                             and always should be.

 

Migrations

Last weekend, a friend observed she could mark the seasons by the source of the blueberries in the supermarket where she shops. (For foreign readers- Safeway is a supermarket chain in the U.S.)

                                                        Migrations

                        Blueberries move north, just behind the birds.
                        You can track them at the Safeway.
                        In January they come from Chile,
                        transplanted treat the Incas never knew.
                        By March a hybrid that can take the heat
                         ripens among  Florida retirees,
                         a faint foreshadowing of the real thing.
                         Come August they are back where they belong,
                         growing New England wild for birds, bears,
                         and blue-tongued boys to taste how winter chill
                         becomes summer sweetness and how summer’s
                         surfeit makes way for winter’s long, spare rest.

Latecomers

  Just a few thoughts about the people who don't make it to the theatre in time for the start of the show.

               Latecomers

will be seated during a break
in the action, just as they have
fit our play into a break between
whatever made them late and
whatever they have left undone.

Parallel Parking

This one started with the title and some thoughts while driving to work.

   Parallel Parking

No signal does it justice         
since it is more than a stop
and not quite a turn,
depending on other
drivers to divine
we have passed
where we want to be
and are going to back up
until it becomes where we are –
close but not too close
to the curb and the cars,
filled with the comfort
and pride of all things
difficult and dreaded
when once well done.