haiku (a newfound form)

(recently borrowed Jack Kerouac's Book of Haikus from my local library; I found in the plaintive wording and imagery of his purely Americanized haiku something grand and elating, just like his prose possesses for me; thus spawned a new endeavor, though I see that I've been writing in this way for a long time, just now finding a new guiding force for a new discipline that the haiku form requires; here are some samples of recent attempts)


wind is nothing
but moving air-
think about it

*

the last oak and maple leaves
race each other in the streets
one final gasp of colorful breath

*

studying maps-
life in
two dimensions

*

shaking branch-
the bird
flew away

*

so many shooting stars-
where they going off to
in such a hurry?

*

starlings on the wire
sing in myriad voices-
little black songbooks

*

a lonesome sparrow
fighting the wind
lands on a powerline

*

famously distrustful of
scientists and historians-
the dreamy poet

*

Joshua tree sings
a hollow song
in November coldfront

*

first snowfall in the Sierra
looks like heaven
from the desert floor

*

trees in the backyard
gone to seed-
sparrows feed on the ground

*

everything in a
haze, a swampy
forest of dreams

*

mountains in clouds,
mountains of clouds-
what's the difference?

*

autumn in the desert
watching ravens dive
in a stripmall parking lot

*

seagulls in the Valley,
so far
from the sea

*

every single
Van Gogh brushstroke
is a haiku

*

on the museum balcony
staring at the sea-
God's artwork


*

frail and submissive
like a child
in another's arms

*

the great tideless
ocean of time-
desert dust on my car

*

show no pity
for the dying
deer, fox, or sparrow

*

heat grows faint
in the long
shadows of dusk

*

cold birds in the mountains
flying west
don't care that it's Christmas

*

sifting the fine sand
with your fingers,
feeling ages slip through

*

compassionate and ascetic,
each Catholic saint
a lightskinned Buddha

*

each in his
own holy place
under the moon

*

three jets' vapor trails
made a crease
in the morning sky

*

we are all
existentialists, because
we all exist