Three Haiku for Flying Creatures

The flowers are here!

But the tiger swallowtail

flies up to the sun.

--- \o/ ---

Robin runs in spurts

along the road: who praises

the running of birds?

--- \o/ ---

Ragged butterfly,

how can you flutter up

more hole than wing?

--- \o/ ---

Where

Head down

scuff the gravel

cool between tall trees

step out into the bright heat

of home perched alone

on the crisp hilltop.



Head up

rustle ripe timothy

growing wild, hiding home

though you stretch up tiptoe

under that same sun to see

then step through and crunch across.



Straight ahead

driving by on the highway

tar and bricks steal proof of memory . . .

I do not follow that now paved road

nor look for overgrown paths to follow

just in case

the house stares back at me.





(Written during a workshop at the boyhood home of Stanley Kunitz; given themes: place and time.)

Stag

Today I heard you crack branches

and rip through tangled leaves

as you leaped up the impossible slope

above the roadway.

Seeing is not needed for believing.

I knew it was you.

When I did see you, I was not looking.

My eyes were surveying leafy side roads

into the park as I whizzed past,

seeking the road not taken.

You can't believe everything you hear,

but you were soundless anyway.

Like an icon in a Celtic mystery

you stood in the middle of the path

hocks hidden in the mist and antlers high,

echoing branches of dead trees.

Believing is not seeing.

I know you are out there, sight unseen.

Galloway Brook

     . . . there

appearing

      the brook takes five bends . . .

                             sparkling white with captured sun

undulating brown beneath evergreens

                       twirling a trio of sky blue eddies

        mirroring green overhanging maples

               retreating as low golden shallows cut by shadows . . .

disappearing

     there . . .

Three Hike Haiku: At the Pond

White-bearded elders,

last year's cattails, watch over

brown, beardless youngsters.

Yellowed green leaf in a

dying spiral mimics briefly

that tiger swallowtail.

Lest I didn't notice

he flies to the sole dead tree

bold red cardinal.