Poetry

Haibun: Fall in Arizona

/ Brian / 1 Comment

The haibun is a Japanese literary form combining a prose section and a haiku. I plan on doing one for each season in Arizona.

 

It is the day before Halloween, the last day of a week-long hitch for a conservation crew in Apache National Forest in eastern Arizona. We have been axing down tall, broad ponderosa pines to clear the way for a cattle fence that will be put up. Physically exhausting but rewarding work, though without any clear conservational value. At noon, we tool up and hike five miles back to camp, then 8 miles to the van. We camp by a creek. The 2012 election is in a week, so the far left-leaning crew talks politics. The election seems somehow distant, less real than the fire warming us in the autumn chill of high desert Arizona, less real than the woods we had lived in and worked with during the week, less real than the trees, than the moon rising above the trees. Their words and ideas, though well thought out and intelligently spoken, continue to slip through my hands, going up and away with the smoke of the fire. I stay silent and listen, to their voices, to the wind in the trees. I look to the moon.

October full moon
Trail crew talking politics
The creek flows by us

 

A link to a description about haibuns: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/more-birds-bees-and-trees-closer-look-writing-haibun

“Both Sorrow and Joy”

/ Brian / 3 Comments

In the midst of all the sorrow,
Sometimes there comes joy.
Unsought, not bought,
It comes and goes in an instant, impossible to grasp,
Like an unexpected siren that heralds a life saved.

Sometimes you feel both at the same time,
Both sorrow and joy.
These are the best times.

Like the time you were walking down the foreign street at dusk,
Feeling as unlike an alien as you’ve ever felt.
The water of the canal, burning with glory, reflected the sun
As a man rowed his boat alone, making very little noise,
Creating only the slightest of ripples.

And then you were standing on the bridge,
Your hand in her hand,
Both pairs of eyes fixed on what is never fixed, what is always in flux.
The sky. The water. The bridge that would one day collapse.
You thought to yourself: tomorrow
This will all still be here:
The sky. The water. The bridge.

But in the late afternoon on the next day you walked with your hands in your pockets,
And as the sun set
You grasped your fingers tight to the solid, stable, immobile rail,
That would not, that could not flee.

Again there was a man rowing alone in his boat,
Making very little noise,
Creating only the slightest of ripples.
You watched him,
You were him.

They came at the same time then.
In that moment,
As the sun set on the foreign town where you were now a stranger,
You felt both sorrow and joy.

“Alone With The Desert”

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The Prescott College orientation is a three-week backpacking trip in the Arizona wilderness.
We have just finished a ten-day trek through Grand Canyon,
Now we are in the Superstition Range of the Tonto National Forest,
Outside of the Phoenix-Tempe-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolis.

It is the first morning of solo.
Two days to be
Alone with yourself,
Alone with the desert.

I go to a spot on the western hillside where I will feel the first rays of the sun.
It was a cold night; the water is frozen in the Nalgene.
I sit and listen to the bee-like buzzing of the hummingbird,
Hear the spirited call of the cactus wren.
Perhaps it rasps with expectation, watching the sun come down the hill,
Closer to this spot.
Or maybe the bird is above,
Already feeling the sun’s warmth from the branches of a juniper.
Good to be a bird, able to fly up and meet the rising sun.

I close my eyes
As the sun comes up from the east, over the hill.
I feel its warmth, feel my toes as they thaw out,
Touch the leaves and the sticks around me, the rocks.

In my mind’s eye, I see the shrubs and trees I know to be close by:
The tall alligator juniper behind me, the beargrass in the sun to my left,
The smooth red manzanita in the shade to my right.
I see too without opening my eyes the cloudless blue sky,
The rocky wash between the prickly pear cacti and the cat claw and the velvet mesquites,
And the small flat area, just big enough to lay down the pad and sleeping bag,
Where I bedded down last night.

Sounds.
More birds chirp and sing now; the sun is up and over the hill.
I don’t know the names of the birds,
But my ignorance does not detract from the loveliness of their songs.
I hear bees buzzing around me,
Feel the first fly of the day land on my left foot,
Perhaps attracted by the scent of unwashed flesh, two weeks now.
I feel the slightest of winds, hear a plane flying overhead.

I open my eyes
And pick up the book I had been reading.
The truth of the words within feel as natural
As the sun that warms me this morning,
Have all the clarity of the deep blue desert sky.
I bring the book close to my face and smell its pages,
Like a librarian who in the early morning when no one is watching
Opens her favorite books at random,
Breathes in the sweet pure fragrances of the pages she loves so well
And then puts each book back in the stacks,
Carefully, gently,
As if the books are lovers,
And maybe they are.

I close my eyes again.

The sun is warm now.
I take off all my clothes and sit on a rock,
Fully nude,
Feeling my bare ass contact the cold hard granite surface.
Another airplane flies overhead
But does not disturb the stillness or my solitude.
The plane is distant, far away;
It can only be heard for a fleeting moment, and then it is gone.
The desert is here.
I can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it.

I open my eyes.

“Almost”

/ Brian / 1 Comment

At the Deli in Prescott I sit at a table,
Next to the fence which separates me from the outside world.
Attached to the fence are two dogs, one smaller than the other and black and white.
The larger one looks like a golden lab, though I’m not sure.
They are just far enough away from each other that they can’t touch,
Though they are close,
About a foot away.
 
Almost together, but alone.
Almost touching, but not quite.

“As Worthy As The Gift That Can’t Be Sought”

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I.

At a certain vantage point,
In a certain light,
Maybe I look alright to you.
Don’t let that distract you,
Don’t let that part attract you,
It’s only a trick of the light.
 
You speak my language,
Which is why I haven’t heard you say a word.
They told you to focus on the positive,
But you know if you do that you’ll just get bored.
The world is a whole lot more interesting
When you see the whole of it.
Good and bad, joy and sorrow,
Don’t flee from the ultimate.
 
You wish there was something that could demysticate the mystical:
Domesticate the wild,
Force the adult out of the child.
You want something that will make it all clear,
But don’t be intimidated by what stays in the shadows,
By the silence that is harder to hear.
You fear what is not revealed,
What stays hidden, concealed.
 
Listen, if it was easy to find it wouldn’t be worth searching for.
If it was free to enter, there would be no use in having a door.
 
II.

There are beautiful things, like the piano that sounds the aching heart;
And ugly things, like the way you’ve been hurt from the start.
It is ugly when no one hears the lone hobo’s moan,
But beautiful the way you dance for yourself alone.
 
You’re a kindred spirit,
So don’t be afraid.
The world is harsh to those who hear it,
Hear the yearning, hear the pain,
Hear what is never spoken,
Hear what cannot be expressed or learned.
But here, take this simple token,
To remember that others feel the same.
 
I know you are looking for that piercing line,
The truth hidden underneath the lies.
But when it’s dark and you look out the window
Don’t you see a reflection of yourself?
Don’t you know there is nothing else?
Inside, outside:
There’s never been a difference.
It’s so simple yet so insidious.
I’ll share with you something,
I’ll share with you my precious time,
Which is not so precious and not so much mine.
 
I know it hurts you that the world laughs when you’re brave enough to cry,
But think of the beautiful things, like the startling clarity of the desert sky.
It’s an ugly disguise that you’re forced to put on to hide your mourning,
But nothing can conceal the beauty of the stillness in the early morning.
 
You’re a kindred spirit,
So don’t be afraid.
The world is harsh to those who hear it,
Hear the yearning, hear the pain.

Be aware of the walls
And watch them crumble before you,
As you stumble upon a recognition
That you aren’t quite as worthless as you once thought,
That you are as worthy as the gift that can’t be sought.

“What Are You Doing?”

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What are you doing staring at the moon?
Well, I guess that remains to be seen.
I understood loneliness one afternoon.
It was perfect.
If only I could remember what I mean.

I have a vision of the world before I came into it.
It was the same.
I have a vision of what the world will be after I leave it.
It will be the same.
So what am I doing then?
I might as well become a hermit,
I might as well sail across the seas,
I might as well try to earn this,
Try as I might I can’t be free.
 
What are you doing looking at the sky?
Well, I guess that remains to be seen.
The winds ask me questions; I give my replies.
They are perfect.
I won’t even think about what they mean.
 
I have a vision of you before you met me.
You were the same.
I saw you from a distance after you left me.
You were still the same.
So what were we doing then?
Thinking of you deforms me,
I’ll never say your name.
I know that you transformed me,
I’ll never be the same.

What are you doing dwelling on the past?
Well, I guess that remains to be seen.
Once I lost something I didn’t know I had.
The whole thing was far from perfect.
If I only knew what the hell I mean.

Why do you need to wake up so early?
That I never quite know.
Before I left, I was already returning.
Exactly.
But if I knew I wouldn’t have to go.

I saw the treasure gleaming golden up ahead,
I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
When I opened my eyes
What I thought was the prize was gone.
I turned around and kept searching,
On my face a rare smile, on my lips an old song.