half moon

half moon
giving thanks
for all of it

Words

Today a favorite poem that speaks of how language defines the world and always falls short. Very relevant to haiku's subtlety, its "pointing a jeweled finger at the moon."

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

from Interrogations at Noon
© 2001 Dana Gioia

cold drizzle

cold drizzle
how can a broken heart
continue breaking?

Happy birthday, my son

winter in the wind

winter in the wind
no cake for this candle lit
in memoriam

For Andy

biodiversity

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. I thought this pictorial in the NYT titled "biodiversity" was particularly poetic and humorous. You'll see autumn leaves in a new light.

Simply Haiku

Catch my latest publication at Simply Haiku. See assemblages 2, 3, and 4.

last leaf

last leaf
re-learning the art
of letting go

late autumn

late autumn
preferring the quiet work
of raking leaves

all saints day

all saints day
from the corner of my eye
someone   no one