Three Haikus
Whirling leaves, snow, birds
Frenzied seasons circle a
Patient bicycle.
y-branch tree
steel cables bit in
screws in bone
We yanked the stump out.
That pretty blue spruce is just
A memory now.
Tag Archives: Nature
Impressions of a River
We walked on a sandbar
stepped where a blue heron stepped
the four lines where its foot fell
pressed into crackles by our weight.
We found warm shallows
where life abounded
mollusks the size of our palms
had pulled themselves across the floor
doodling blind, directionless lines
searching for I do not know what
We found a gar
dried to leather
black as driftwood in the moist sunshine
sunken eyes like leather coins
expressionless, shriveling down
to its primeval skull.
We found wet clay
as deep as our knees
We mired ourselves on purpose
and struggled back out again
Pretending we were dinosaurs
Or maybe the making
of some new fossil
Everything on the riverbank leaves a trace
Every path is printed
That is until
the water rises, falls
and refreshes itself.
Each rainfall rinsing
the palette clean.
Aoudads
Aoudads are enormous, proud, and graceful animals.
The largest have sweeping beards from chest to hoof,
thick horns curling behind them,
and a critical goaty gaze
which sees you from its perch
high in the desert rocks
and seems to say, “what low thing
squints up at my grandeur?”
Their strength prevails in a climate
where lesser breeds wither.
Every image on the net
is one of these proud ruminant gods,
dwarfing a human at their side,
head upright,
held aloft by the horns
by a smiling hunter.
Something there is about a god
which drives mankind to kill it.
We suffer nothing to live above us.
everything in miniature
i am nature blown small
the wind blows
i sigh
the trees bend
i lean
the earth quakes
i crack
channeled throughout with warm waters
tributaries of blood
ebb and flow in pulsing tide
on the spinning earth
my toes dig for purchase
running the surface
we lonely seek where we belong
how can we be alone
belonging anywhere we seek?
Haiku – Starlings
Starlings murmurate
Three hundred birds in a bush
Chirp a rolling boil
Sarah D. Silvey 