Winterpring Haiku

a plum
and its fruit flies
on Facebook

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snow patchiness
spring morning
a man sprays hair

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Brahms wandering
the house looking for
a soft spot

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housebound by snow
we hear the neighbor widow’s
vacuum sucking

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the cat wanders
a house looking for
quiet pronunciation

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watching a river
its icy mind
a sorry lover

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singles dance–
the astronomy
of repurposed moons

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that moment
in the city where no one
touches anything

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poetry
it’s prose
with the silencer on

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winter melon
death’s all about
the timing

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winter graveyard–
you reread a book
for its silences

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summer stars
anything this slow
is hard to follow

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the house thaws
spring peepers rejoice
over a divorce

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quiet rain
the window
nurses its drink

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e.r. waiting room
dirt under my fingernails
someone dancing

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missing someone
so far down the railroad tracks
they’re heat

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how to build a nest
first twig
best twig

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half seen
in the river glimpses
of bedclothes

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cold morning
fingernail dirt
scraped with a dime

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midnight 
bodies on city streets pulled by
invisible leashes

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after his divorce
people joke he’s like the man
with the invisible dog

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MISSING:
INVISIBLE DOG–a xerox
of the stiff leash and harness

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not long
after being born
footsteps

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eating an orange
someone has died
into bright flavor

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you notice too late
your body
is a cave

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a dog walks a man
without a leash
half in the ocean

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man walked
on the moon
the long leash

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over
human silhouettes
a shooting star

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winter lake
the only sound
magnet fishers

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your distance
a taste of honey
shooting star

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seeing
the shooting star
human silhouettes

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Valentine’s Day
sweeping summer’s flies
off a sill

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death row inmates
write love letters
to fame zombies

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spring minnows
drinking my reflection
find it refreshing

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looking through
my autumn reflection
a crayfish

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a crayfish
I feel I know
hard to explain

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looking through
my reflection
spring minnows

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my honey bear
plastic bottle years later
still sticky

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summer nearfar
the horizon’s honey
poured over distance

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catching crayfish
under creek rocks the graveyard
sticks up for itself

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looking through
my autumn collection
of unnameable colors

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meet my neighbors
a dead pigeon and a forty
left on the corner

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roadside bottles
thrown from cars
become little Venuses

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so-called human!
so-called human!
screams a crow

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don’t have kids
even your plastic plant
died a horrible death

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drunk after midnight
he wonders how to shoot
a potato between all its eyes

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a drunken man
screaming at the river
“I SAW YOU!”

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flooding river
all the bicycles underwater
pedal like Philip Glass

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Valentine’s Day
smile of someone
chewing bread without teeth

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winter blues
my pineal gland plays
its Greatest Hits

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state cop
writing the full moon
another ticket

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second date–
seeing his scorpion’s
black light fluorescence

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first date–
he says he doesn’t want
to smell like his house

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third date–
while you drive
he looks for Bigfoot

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fourth date–
zoo argument
about monkeys’ rights

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late apology–
rain paints
a desert

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his wrist slips
into the wrong watch
in motel darkness

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winter office flirts–
tinned sardines
lose their heads

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prayer candle–
telling the dead
where to go

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first spring day
a puppy runs through slush
of his birth alley

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candlelight vigil–
we are one
with the dead

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mother cat
sees even her stillborns
wriggling in moonlight

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drawing on the dead
moth’s wing someone says
it’s like a sin

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all is ocean
dawn’s gold dust motes on air
ebb and flow

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day after Halloween
a president’s face
in the trash

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going home
wearing another’s underwear
thank you motel darkness

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autumn moon
feeling the divorce
she wears red

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a blind man smiles
at the moon with you
out of courtesy

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refugees at sea
hold up words
they don’t know

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January first
burning incense
while the cat’s out

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something trapped
behind her eyes
an old filmstrip

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funeral’s end
crows take a few last turns
after the sun

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watching streets
turn ice growing someone
else’s beard

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in my palms
my fair share
of moonlight

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father’s war letters
to a home he only knew
from photographs

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foggy night
reading mother’s letters
to herself

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sewing a button
looking at fog
the colors in old letters

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out walking
in spring fog
cars rearrange me

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empty fog streets
traffic lights changing
nothing so much

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traffic lights change
over empty streets there shouldn’t be
a word for nothing

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spring fog viewing
there should be
no word for nothing

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August dawn walk
the river can’t stop
touching my shoes

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spring grows its hair
rarer and rarer
to hear a phone ring

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in a condemned house
a broom
beautiful with age

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Shaker double stairs–
brothers and sisters winding
down the DNA

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competing at night
with the forest’s
strange secretions

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winter moon
secretes moonlight
which secretes me

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watching winter cars
tropical fish
in a store window

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eyes closed in bed
on the phone with you
shopping together

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one hospital stay
the peonies live and die
without our help

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nurse grimaces–
another vegan
in a coma

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visiting a man
in a vegetative state–
we become radios

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you argue when I say
the peonies at the edge
are nobody’s

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morning moon
when time’s up
on a story

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the widow
carries birdseed out back
to rave reviews

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highway traffic
the ripples
in my morning

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snatched weave
burning with moonlight
on an icy street

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driving past
cemeteries only winking
at the dead

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all the movies
endings missed
New Year’s Day

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cinnabar all day
her words
mercury at night

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everywhere
I’ll never be
the rain

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asleep in vinyl
under the bed
summer grass

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barfly likes young men
spring trees
yet to grow bark

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after his death
finding pot
behind family photos

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digging dark tunnels
through darker tunnels
think we’re in love

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shiver of a loon
cry on the lake
minding no store

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September 11th
a blind man plunges his hand
in thick mud

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seeds between fathers
colors between mothers
sons between deaths

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no one
being born today
the foghorn

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words are atoms
atoms only echoes
echoes are laws

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late summer–
heard my words circle around
in a canyon

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spring cemetery
we don’t visit our family
right away

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mother’s mother’s
old scissors the dreamfare
to another country

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small earthquake–
people wake to make love
and some babies

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small earthquake
as we sleep
new countries

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moon glistens
in the spider’s down
he begs her not to shave

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he pets her
“like a downy spider”
she loves him more

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woke for a drink
and saw the weird people
who thrive in moonlight

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hot July day–
a coroner kneels to remove
gum from a corpse’s mouth

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sweltering day–
the coroner plucks gum
from a corpse’s mouth

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Buddha’s birthday–
counselors give gold star stickers
to death row inmates

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middle of nowhere
halfway home
someone’s laughter

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DON’T TELL ME
red spray paint on a wall
middle of nowhere

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not interested
in the parts of science
not about sleep

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on church pew
on court pew
the same cloud shadow

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rainy graveyard
forgetting the names
all over again

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old tombstone
remembering the moss
not the name

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an orgy–
the only name spoken
God’s

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deer are moonlight
while we sleep
and are worse things

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don’t wake him
he’s young the old fart
dog running in his sleep

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snowstorm
thanking God she makes it home
to the bar

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dusty 8-track
in the basement–
a brother’s last good year

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talking years later
about an ex
while cows eat thistles

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summer divorce–
both their names
thrown like frisbees

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after your death
dream where new teeth
rise in spring

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maybe they’re daughters
braiding her white hair
who knows

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spring day–
some things about to blossom
are fists

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she finds herself
unable to paint
without the tub’s drip

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you follow
a red maple leaf
down the creek to you

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abalone
far from the diver
the sheen

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December 24th–
the stars cattle in
warm stalls

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whistling over snow–
he sees his leg trap
holds just a leg

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out of the metro
Ezra Pound less Ezra Pound
a few seconds

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weatherman’s arm swoops
before a green screen–
a bee’s wiggle dance

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deathwatch
tiny white pumpkin
intact at New Year’s

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icicles dripping–
a blind date
with a new dentist

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a branch fallen
in the snow
homegrown crucifix

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seeking anything
to scratch its back
autumn wind

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at the trail head
cautious deer
in moonlight

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in moonlight
we are moonlight
strange footprints

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an entire village
of the dead somewhere
our radiator warmed

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waking and sleeping
my body in sync
with the radiator’s moods

photos: Pexels