Haiku – Where to Now?

“As with dancing you have to learn the steps”
– Jim Harrison (Day Three – 28 Days of Unreason)

Stairs like Rubik’s cube
Dance steps to infinity –
We are amazed

Salamander Mind

“Why does the mind compose this music well before the words occur?”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Eight – 28 Days of Unreason)

My salamander mind
Has nestled itself into place

So there it is
Cold-nosed

Like an inappropriate
Dog

“On some clear nights in the country the stars can exhaust us”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Six – 28 Days of Unreason)

Dull constellations
The Crutch, The Old Hats, The Snores –
I have seen the light

“Such fragile wings”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Three – 28 Days of Unreason)

It is this air
That is fragile –

Carries your hints
But cannot hold them,

Gives way to gesture,
Breaks into wisps,

Suggestions
Easily swept aside.

But when you caught
Your breath,

Amassed its density,
Felt portent spreading

Like wings,
You took flight –

Your anger aloft
On nothing but words

“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin that finds all barriers brutishly unbearable”
– Jim Harrison (Day Four – 28 Days of Unreason)

She collects whispers from the menagerie,
Breathes the restless prowling
Back to me.

Who is this silkwife – spinning threads of touch
From the tangled desire
of moths?

My arms swing her up in their trawl –
She knows catch and release,
The leap of endolphins.

“It is life’s work to recognize the mystery of the obvious”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Seven – 28 Days of Unreason)

Honeycrisp apple –
Wife offers sweet mystery,
Temps me with a bite

“The river can’t heal everything”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Five – 28 Days of Unreason)

Lips as split as sky –
The headwaters of mercy –
Rain on Golgotha