Vacant Lot Haiku

vacant lot
wildflowers
holding someone’s mail



red balloon
in a cemetery
holding your breath


evening
shadows
night picks up


in the woods
a snake passes before me
before I pass myself


snake spotting
deep woods
time sheds its skins



deep woods
your time not mine
holds my hand


everything only
borrowed light
speaking



long after
the reflection
the light


which comes first
the light
or the reflection



Kato Shuson
the wildflowers
your soft grenades


garden we planted
then let go–
strange shapes entwine


raging sea
finds one soft spot
in a boulder



bubbles
in ancient glass
hand-me-down windows


empty coffee cup
one continent
pushes another


morning diner
the first one seated
keeps his coat on



her desk’s peeled orange–
a skyscraper
sways in wind



manhole steam
in the night things not words
gossip


bird’s snow trill
all the wasted flutes
in my bones


night coming
a period
grows a tail


a dragonfly
collects energy
from a hot tombstone


morning diner
the waitress pours coffee
from another lifetime


a Monarch unfurls–
as many ways to be born
as die


mushroom
if you touch her house
ghosts emerge


a country
a rain puddle
collects rain


the waitress’s smile
a pink packet
sugar substitute


morning diner
he tells a teen waitress
why suspenders matter


things are far
from their birth–
a worm in rain



frost window
my reflection
must be away


diner parking lot
sparrows kill time
until McDonald’s opens



his family dead
an old man finds new enemies
at a diner


mark on glass
from a dog’s nose
not sure which side


old men’s diner
all the coats
are too big



night’s stars
tell a story
breathless


morning diner
two octogenarians
plot a new country


the wind–
a child’s
half-finished drawing



winter diner
a waitress forgets
Proust’s name again


small diner
a truck with Trump stickers
takes up two spots



starfish–
a blind hand
shows you its teeth


starfish
all night dream
they are starfish



the morning
pretends to be an image
again again



orphaned train car
spring nestlings
sing of new hair


a stone
its starkness
fuzzy in my mind



one room schoolhouse
there’s a wasp trapped inside
local history


a peach’s fuzz
some are aroused
by armor


listening to trains
from a bathtub you say
you don’t say



winter diner
nobody young here
but the sparrows



trains and bird trills
morning’s metallic
in sound


birds then trains
morning sounds
met with silence



a houseplant grows
largely ignoring
nonessential input


funeral hands
people touching people
as autumn does


empty milk jug
in the fridge
as a memo


airplane overhead
sound waves in my body
want out










 Photo: Artem Saranin