I was planning to do a haiku per day for the whole summer. And I made pretty good progress: see month 1 and month 2. But in the third month … well, to paraphrase Alan Jackson, who was paraphrasing Eddie Cochran:
Sometimes I wonder
what I’m gonna do
’cause there ain’t no cure
for the summer haiku.
Life gets busy, time gets short, the poetry backlog gets long, and eventually you just gotta cut your losses.
Still, I completed 74 of a planned 94, which is 74 more than zero. So without further rambling ado, here’s what I wrote in the third month of summer:
#63 — 8/27/18
Concrete is cracking,
inch by inch, year by slow year.
Nature is pushing.
#64 — 8/27/18
Luminous, gibbous
globe wider than Kazakhstan
hangs in the treetop.
#65 — 8/28/18
Dawn light drips over
brick-and-vinyl horizon
and evaporates.
#66 — 8/28/18
T-shirt to be washed
lies limp on cool bathroom floor
dreaming of sunshine.
#67 — 8/28/18
Razor scrapes my skin,
once more rebuking nature’s
tiny excesses.
#68 — 8/30/18
Headlights plow darkness
like snowplows clear away snow,
piling shadows deep.
#69 — 8/30/18
Warm dusting of rain
taps out softly on my skin
messages from clouds.
#70 — 8/30/18
Old routine, routine:
worn thin, rearranged, re-trod.
Trails change; same old dirt.
#71 — 8/30/18
Lightning like anger
flashes distantly, thunders,
and gives meager light.
#72 — 9/7/18
Tonight I can see
why this pitted white crescent
was called a goddess.
#73 — 9/7/18
Turn signal, little
heartbeat, reminds its master
that a path can change.
#74 — 9/7/18
A long, jagged rip
in the cloudfront exposes
imperial gray.
Brian D. Buckley 