Haiku

If I could turn down
the static in my head, what
sweet song would I hear?

The Rider Up The Road

Tomorrow is a speeding rider up the road.

My slight gain, a slip back--I can't reel him in,

hovering, rocking, shimmering in the cold.

No number, no race, nothing clear to win.

What may I see around the beckoning curve?

No matter my speed, I will face it alone.

Will it steel me, spur me, or unhinge my nerve?

Feeling much, only seeing what is shown.

We all ride, trapped in our bubbles of time.

Yet in any moment, who can say “it's mine”?

I will be that rider, as I was the one behind.

You and I are alike, not in time but in kind.

Chasing that next fleeting rider up the road

into another evening's quickly fading glow.

Haiku

Two rivers of speech
flow to a silent pool where
all is understood.

Two about breathing

Silence, then wind comes

off the river, like the breath

of eons of words.

Let my anger come

and go, quickly and cleanly,

as a breath: in, out. 

 

Haiku

The moisture in my

breath fogging the window was

once hard, angry hail.

Forward

Three hundred sixty five

days open and shut, darkness

and light, and we're here

again, this arbitrary line

that the earth and stars

disregard, operating on

their own silent clocks

but, still, time (a gift!) to

think of a similar line in

between this now and the next,

each ripe to begin--

So, universe,

let me look forward

using vision (in all its senses),

let me see color and shape

emerge from the dawn of

each future moment, to

look forward at least as much

as I reach back to those

familiar comforts (even when

they are sharp and hard),

forward, into that which

only seems like a void,

leaping and large.

Up the Hollow

Midnight, on the way home

walking uphill from the

bar where the music

cut to the viscera

far beyond the day's

ennui and minutiae

of contracts and salaries

grades and plan-book

ledger lines--

who's here, who's not

what they earn--

and life opens up

along Sheridan Hollow

this desolate gash of canyon

in the heart of Albany--

and I am a dog

marking his territory

loving that alone-ness

of big spaces for crowds

now empty and quiet

with the hum of lighted

kiosks and halos over streets

angels or not it doesn't matter

as linden leaves dance in

the warm October air

and it's a foreign country

as soon as routine is broken

and it's a Thursday night

several pints deep now

and my feet know the way

as I move like a fugitive

picking up and leaving behind

little bits here and there

down Dove Street across Washington

a quick skip as the relay clicks and

lights change for midnight traffic

of cabs—blond waves crash

into the front seat and a

mummy-figure sweeps past

in a bright bus whoosh

and I find my way home--

not lonely just alone.