Lines for a wet summer

gravel piles

A wet summer.
At the entrance to the hollow,
twin peaks of gravel.

*

Storm-carved ruts
on the gravel driveway
fill up with hailstones.

*

damselfly

Blue damselflies
patrol the slow-moving waters
of the blueberry bog.

*

Done berry picking,
I wash the bog mud off my legs
with brown bog water.

*

Morning thunder,
then rain. “It’s just getting it out
of its system, right?”

*

An indoor picnic.
The child climbs the steep stairs
to the green room.

*

shirt window

In lieu of a curtain,
a checkered shirt catches
the evening sun.

8 Replies to “Lines for a wet summer”

  1. Ethan tells me it’s been mighty wet in western Massachusetts, too, over the weeks since I left town.

    The greenery in your photographs here amazes me. I’m going to be bowled over next week when I get back to the Berkshires. Seven weeks in the desert has changed my sense of light and color something fierce.

  2. A beautiful string of haikus. And the poems are great, too.

    And I’m so relieved that even a man of your discernment owns one of those universal plastic deck chairs.

    ;-)

    J

  3. My favorite here is:

    Done berry picking,
    I wash the bog mud off my legs
    with brown bog water.

    The alliteration is so neat and so unorthodox.

  4. Thanks for the comments.

    Rachel – Yeah, your eyes are gonna hurt for a while. Deserts are a real aesthetic pleasure for me. the few times I’ve visited them, I didnt want to leave. Fortunately, I like forests almost as much.

    SvenWaring – Glad you liked these. Rhythm is alost inescable with my stuff, regardless of the genre – I can’t help but be guided by it.

    Jarrett – The chair I sit in every morning while I drink my coffee is a plastic stack chair. Extremely comfortable. But ultimately disposable, because when they break, they can’t be repaired. So I suppose I should deplore them, shouldn’t I?

    CGP – Thanks. We’ve had wetter years, but it’s been a while.

    miguel – Yeah, I was frustrated that the clarity wasn’t there to feature this one on the photo blog, cuz I was so pleased with the composition.

    dale – That may be my favorite of the lot as well – and as usual with haiku, it was the easiest to write.

    lissa – Oh good, a vote for that one! That was my favorite of the photos, but I wasn’t sure if the haiku quite did it justice. Thanks.

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