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Daily Haiga, February 6, 2022

A tanka story set to music. A man and a woman come to terms with her impending death.

Tanka and music by grahnArt (Richard Grahn)

Thank you, Michael Rehling for posting this to your Youtube channel. The playlist section of Michael’s site is here.

a cloud basks
in dawn’s first rays . . .
the marsh is quiet
but for the wail
of a loon

Gabe always had an artist’s bent. Early on, he was a builder, a civil engineer. Whole cities with houses, tunnels, and waterways, anything you can construct with wet sand. He took up Lincoln Logs and Erector sets—forts with Ferris Wheels—and built a complete, detailed reproduction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a Biblical activity suitable for the Sabbath. He created blanket forts, tree forts, snow forts, igloos, kites, and slings like the one that felled Goliath.

So, it began with invention. The important stuff revolved around how to pack and pile sand, hands scrubbed clean by the grains, knees wet and gritty. Or how to gauge the trajectory of a rock sailing through the air, the snap of the sling against his wrist.

When compelled to write, Gabe looked for a way out. That was one of the arts that would have to wait. Instead, it was all about interior design—rearranging the bedroom every other day, making sure all the stuffed animals were in just the right places, their colors arranged into patterns.

following
the gurgling brook
in his mind . . .
forging a path
to the headwaters

Gabe’s parents couldn’t get along, so they shipped him to Maine where he climbed trees and roamed fields ripe with poetry: the sticky sap of white pine on his fingers, the tang of berries plucked from a field, sunsets to truly seal the day, and walls of rain to split the hovering sky. His falsetto voice rang out hymns in church or played them on his harmonica as he perched on the top of a tree.

Back and forth between relatives, dust never gathering on the wheels. Then came a girl—well, just a kiss, though the flirt would last through summer camp.

a honey bee
floats through the garden
then vanishes
into the folds
of a rose

Junior high was a combination of playing in the band and running. With running, Gabe flew like a bird over the terrain, his streamlined running shoes an extension of his body. Barely a thud on the grass as he sped his way to victory after victory, and with each victory came the urge to achieve more. Sometimes the wind was in his face, other times at his back. Either way, he was in tune with the wind, rain, sun, and snow.

Clarinet? Well, first it was a trombone with which he terrorized the family. Then he learned where to put his fingers on the clarinet and how to wet the reed with his saliva. He was out of tune with the band which played so loudly that no one could hear him, but he found a way to exhale into the instrument that created pleasing sounds, so he made up his own songs.

skipping stones
across the pond . . .
droplets
of late spring rain
on his brow

Then he found Susan. The universe took her away. There was only running left. Not knowing where to run, Gabe took his harmonica just in case.

gazing
at the desert’s edge
compass pointing
into the wind
eyes filled with sand

Weightless, that’s how it felt. Unattached. Drifting toward his roots, then recoiling. The army fixed all that. They took away his harmonica and introduced him to marijuana, LSD, and meth. He responded by drawing pictures inside the drawer in his room, copying images from the covers on packets of papers he used when rolling joints.

the snap of a twig
in the evening twilight . . .
stars come out
floating
as if from a dream

He landed on the street with his thumb out for a ride. Rode a long way from his own insides. A dandelion seed in the wind—nowhere to take root—until out of the mist, a hand drew him in.

Gabe’s romance with education began when he enrolled in a summer drafting class at a nearby community college. Soon, he was a logic tutor.

The hand guided him back to his gifts and opened a world never before imagined. He completed a degree in fine arts and reconnected with music. A taste of normalcy. But the hand could not hold him.

Sex? Yes!
Drugs? Yes!
Rock ‘n’ Roll?
for whenever all else fails
or whenever

Still, more school. Gabe churned out sculptures as if he was flipping burgers at the local diner. They wouldn’t all fit into his apartment, so he started giving them away. He moved to San Francisco and took up residence as a full-time artist, first for recreation and then commercially. With the dawn of home computing, he dove in, first with music. Then he made the mistake of buying some database software. Next thing you know, he was a computer programmer, art, all but forgotten. Programming would absorb his creativity for the next 15 years.

Then came the crash, this time plunging deep into the depression pool: a relationship gone awry, deaths, a job and its perks all lost, hospital stays—more than a couple of Jokers in his deck, everything gone—but just when it seemed most hopeless, something clicked.

dense fog
creeps through the valleys
of his mind . . .
a cat yowls
on the mountain

At 58, it was time for a change. First, the gift of a laptop while he was sequestered in a nursing home. He had already started writing poetry by hand in the hospital. With the computer, he compiled his first book of poetry and began working on a book about his crazy life. Soon, writing was an obsession—hours every day spent at the keyboard, everyone but his favorite nurse thinking he was completely mad.

The book caught up to his life in the nursing home about the time he was ready to discharge. He vowed that when that happened, he would finish the book and spend the rest of his life living as an artist.

And he’s doing that. It’s happening in an apartment the size of a hamster cage but it’s happening. When you’ve lost everything, everything is a blessing. Tell a man he can’t, and watch him do. Gabe is at the apex of his creativity. He has learned that doing doesn’t require running, that being himself is the best gift he can give. There is no more resistance against his nature. Each morning now, as age takes hold, he thanks his stars for another day. He’s learning to balance on a spinning earth, spreading his stories like pollen on a summer breeze.

a flutter
of oak leaves~~
the lightness
of shadows dancing
in this Illinois sunset

Contemporary Haibun Online 17:3

I don’t know much about butterflies. I can recognize a Monarch when I see one, but other than that, they’re just nice to look at. Today a white one, with a wingspan of only about an inch and a half, was flitting around in the garden from hosta to vinca to sunflower to rose but never landing. Maybe it was looking for the best place to rest its wings. To and fro, lifted by the wind occasionally up to twenty feet or more, then zigzagging its way back to the flower bed—it seemed to be searching, but for what? Maybe it just likes to fly, enjoys the garden view. Maybe it’s safer in the air.

I have felt like that insect for most of my life, flitting around, looking for the perfect place to rest. We are different as I wear shoes; it doesn’t have holes in its socks. But we are both travelers, navigating our way through the flowerbed of life. It caught the wind; I chose the road, but now I have a roof and it has the sky. As I watched, I realized there was nothing between us but the rays of the sun.

dressed for the milonga . . .
across the dance floor, she glides,
pauses, glides again

Contemporary Haibun Online 17:3

so long quiet night…
the cacophony
of a world awake
is bewitched
by itself

This tale begins at dawn. Eyelids flutter open. Daylight spills in. Covers unfurl. Feet touch the floor. A quick stop at the loo, then off to brew some coffee. Turn on the morning news. Got to catch up with the spinning earth.

Brush teeth, comb hair, and throw on some rags—it’s a rush to beat the morning rush—don’t want to be late. There’s nothing worse than being late.

Don’t forget the keys. It’s a short walk to the train but there’s a long cue at the turnstile. Got to catch that train—don’t want to be late.

Clickety-clack hums the wheels on the rails—cars filled with people with somewhere to go—for a moment, somewhere together. Then we spill onto the street like scattered leaves, minds with different thoughts to fulfill. This swirling soup of energy, one can almost see it breathing. The beating heart of this chaotic dance, one can almost feel it bleeding.

The city wakes from an evening’s dreaming. I merge with it and become obscure. Walking through the throng, I wonder, “Is this what I’m seeking?”

another today
passes by…
a soft wind blows
through the fog
in my mind

Haibun Today: 13.3

The walking man studies the footprints he’s made in the freshly-fallen snow, footprints meandering back through time, back through time with his thoughts. There he finds a boy playing by a stream, happy as a boy can be. He walks over and says, “Hello.” The boy doesn’t hear. He wants to say “remember this” but all he can do is watch for a while as the child works his way along the bank and finally out of sight.

His thoughts lead back to a grassy field where a young man tosses hay bales onto a wagon. The man in the snow wants to shout “be careful” but again can only watch as the farm cart passes by. He knows the young man has no reason to listen to the wind. Turning up his collar, he shrugs away the cold.

Blowing snow is covering his tracks. He’s watching them fade away. He searches for what is left of her, her footprints in the snow. He wants to tell her “I’m sorry” but the footprints just aren’t there. The trail’s gone cold and he’s walking alone on his way back home in a blizzard.

recollections . . .
layers of settling dust
on the bookshelves
begin to obscure
the stories

Atlas Poetica #37

we found each other
in that moment
breaking over the rails,
that moment that swept us
into the sea

If stumbling into misadventure is an art form then we mastered it long ago. Yes, time has passed, and yes, the distance between us is greater than ever. Still, I remember our love of music, our kindred affection for stories, and how we could cry together and laugh in almost a single breath. I can remember that day we danced to Zydeco for hours as the little time we had left together seemed to skip a beat. I remember our happiest moments as if they are happening now.

Were there warning signs? Who knows? What I do know is that the dream imploded as a result of its own design. What remains are simply fragments of that dream. Still, those fragments speak to me, defying the constraints of time. They speak to me of a vision that was, and will always be, a lighthouse on the island in my mind.

born of desire
I cast my net
into the reflection
you left in ripples
on the surface of the stream

Haibun Today June 2019

Not too long ago, we were connected by wires. The wires went to places. We had to be at those places if we wanted to spend time with other people in other places.

Grandma and Grandpa’s local phone number was four digits long. At family gatherings, we used to schedule calls from distant family members. On Christmas day, grandchildren would call the house and we would have a phone visit, each cousin, aunt, and uncle passing the phone to the next in a daisy chain conversation beginning and ending with Grandma. 

The phone used to be a home device, but we are no longer tied to home. Our circle is contained in digital address books accessible with the touch of a virtual button. We are ever on the go but someone always knows where we are.

operator
five, three, two, six, please . . .
the hum
of starlings flying free
across the airwaves

Ribbons 15 | 2 Spring/Summer 2019

memories come flooding back . . .
a squall blowing in
across the water,
berries in the hay,
sunsets through a plate glass window

I remember stories
around the kitchen table . . .
kids playing Chinese checkers,
eating popcorn
and laughing at silly things

beside the fire
and fluorescent stones
we chanted hymns
studied myths
and pleaded for our souls

the world was our adventure
the lightness and the dark . . .
castles by the seashore
cast their shadows down the streets
we found to wander

those bygone trails
beyond the garden
finally brought me here to stand
outside your door
tonight

in moonlit poems
these runes unfold
a menagerie of whispers . . . 
into your ears a song
this mockingbird is singing

Atlas Poetica 36

ommmmmmmmmmmmm…

chanting to the echoes
of dewdrops in a teacup
lips invoke
the ancient songs
of life

where petals fall
into the pond—
a blossom
opens up and shares
its secrets

between what is
and the great beyond
an ocean
in a seashell
pounds the shore

one moment and no more
to spend inside eternity
to leave behind
what’s never been
and seek what’s meant to be

…shanti

Atlas Poetica 34

It begins somewhere in the nebulous inklings of REM sleep, at just about midnight, as we’re speeding down a quiet wooded road. Sara has the wheel in a stranglehold. We’re in the midst of a major tiff.

From out of the darkness, a pair of glowering-white eyes suddenly appears in the headlights. Instead of hitting the brakes, Sara flips the overdrive switch. The car leaves the ground with a whoosh and is quickly transformed into a flying carpet in the shape of a raven. Gravity pulls at the pit of my stomach. Sara is nowhere to be seen.

My temper slowly settles to a simmer as the raven-carpet soars higher and higher into the moonless, starlit night. Soon the earth vanishes, and the rug pulls over next to a narrow set of stairs stretching upward in the direction of the constellation Orion. Three hula dancers step forward to greet me with leis in their outstretched hands. They lead the way, swaying hypnotically in the starlight, strewing petals along the steps. Together we climb into an endless realm of sky as my thoughts reach out for Sara.

oh, that I had never left
such echoes in your ears . . .
butterflies
morph into wolves
feasting on my words

Saint Peter stands at the top of the stairs next to Sara and an archangel wielding a trumpet. Suddenly, the horn sounds and the stairs fall away.

Falling is far from flying. There’s no bottom to space. Stars whiz by as a cold sweat pours out onto the sheets. The dream ends with a lurch, and I wake up feeling unworthy.

Haibun Today Volume 12, Number 4, December 2018
http://haibuntoday.com/ht124/TP_Grahn_TheLast.html

Moving is no fun, but after living in a nursing home for over two years I find it to be an adventure. My stuff, those things that have been languishing in storage all this time, is finally in my possession again. I am rediscovering myself one box at a time. Each box is filled with memories that make looking back both painful and liberating. This vial of Herkimer diamonds, for example, a gift from my favorite rock hound, Grandpa . . . old birthday cards from people who no longer remember my birthday . . . pictures of my last girlfriend . . . aha, my favorite slippers!

Freedom is exhilarating. Not that being cooped-up kept me from expressing myself or expanding my horizons. Heck, during my stay at the nursing home I wrote over 500 poems, made friends outside the home and explored the microcosm of a world around me with staunch enthusiasm. Still, I thank God I’m on my own again.

summer symphony . . .
oh how the meadow
explodes with song

Reborn, my world is full of new and second chances. Now, each memory, each opportunity, each dream is a reason to grow. Every time I look in the mirror, I see a new man, a new creation.

lightning strikes
as the earth keeps spinning
he climbs the mountain

Haibun Today 12 | 4

March 13, 2018 – My energy normally fluctuates. This piece was written over a period encompassing numerous cycles of said fluctuation.

I’m sitting here typing—trying to write a haibun. The problem is that the medication is getting in the way of my brainwaves. When I’m in my manic state, thoughts flow over the dam in a steady stream. In my supposedly-appropriately-medicated state, the proverbial spillway seems to run a bit dry.

blackened fog
hides the moonlit sky . . .
moths gather in the shadows

Bi-polar disorder is fun, well, that’s until I start thinking I can run the world. Then things start to get a bit complicated. It’s hard to describe when these fingers don’t even have the energy to manipulate the keys. The clock on the wall is ticking. Dust is gathering on the bookshelves and the rays of sunlight have vanished into the solemn hour of midnight.

awake in a dream—
reality bites
my dog

What I know about mental illness is that stability comes with a price tag. To have lived a life benefiting from the adrenaline rush of mania seems at first to be a blessing. But then there’s the curse of grandiose thinking and risky behavior not to mention depression looming on the other end of the bridge.

Here, in the middle of that lonely bridge, there stands a fairy with a medicine box clutched in her outstretched hand. Here, there is no turning back. Here, there is no empathy, no emotion played away on the black and white keys of a grand piano. Here I’m just another cardboard silhouette casually propped up in a department store window. Here, there is no shore. Time traces fingerprints on the window. The window opens and I step out onto the crowded street.

got a problem?
take a pill . . .
follow the winding stream

I take a careful step or two, stagger and then stand still. I pause for another breath and then lean into the wind. I’m not sure where I’m headed but I think I see a light ahead. This dream may really be for nothing but nothing’s ever felt so real.

somewhere buried
deep inside—
a clock-spring marking time

Originally Published: Scryptic Magazine, Issue 1.4

I see a light through the keyhole while fumbling with the keys to my imagination. The faint sliver penetrates the darkness just enough that I can tell it’s there. I try the first key. It doesn’t fit. I try the next and the next. Each is another mismatch. Finally, the last one slips into place. The lock clicks as the key twists. I turn the knob. The door swings wide and daylight spills in.

spring morning
I follow a bee
to the honey

First Published: ColoradoBoulevard.net Poet’s Salon
https://www.coloradoboulevard.net/poets-salon-opening-doors/

On the therapist’s couch, I wonder aloud what it would be like to bundle all the pain I’ve ever experienced together with any future pains, to feel them all at once and be done with it. I mean everything, from the hangnails, slivers, cuts, and bruises, to the pain of lost relationships and death. I think how overwhelming it would be, how completely unbearable. Still, if getting it all over in one great rush was possible, would it be worth it or would it kill me?

a river overflows
its banks . . .
silence

First published: Narrow Road Literary Journal, April 2019
Page 39

I splash my face
and fumble for a towel…
sleepy shadow

Staring into the mirror, I revisit my present self. Whiskers have returned. Wrinkles all seem in place. Hair still disappearing, a pondering man looks back at me. I grin shyly, recognizing him as the reflection I met in yesterday’s mirror. A calm overcomes me as I leave the old man to reflect, hoping he’ll be there tomorrow.

The poet eases into his favorite chair, fingers waiting eagerly for a puff of imagination to settle onto the keys. One-by-one, each digit moves and slowly a dance ensues.

He searches for his partner. The muse alights in his mind. They step out onto the page and begin to twirl.

one

the storybook begins
with “once upon a time”
from there we’re left to find a way
to weave our dreams
between the lines

two

many yesterdays ago
there lived a pair on a hill
he walked each day to the spring
to fetch her a cup
of water

three

milady, your hands
fit into mine
as stars fit into the sky . . .
if this is all a dream
then please try not to wake me

one . . .

Haibun Today 13 | 1, March 2019

a poor harvest
of winter wheat . . .
still, I grind the grain
on the old stone wheel
then sow the fields again

It’s morning. Nails protrude through loose floorboards, throw rugs lie threadbare. Like ghosts, curtains hang over shuttered windows. A steady drip from the kitchen faucet echoes down the hall. The closet door is off its hinges.

The other side of the bed is empty, just as it’s been every morning for the past three years. But I’ve had enough. I get up, throw open the window, pick up my hammer, and start pounding the floor.

Atlas Poetica: 39

along the byway
to adulthood
an apple tree bloomed . . .
now I pick its fruit
with weathered hands

I’m in rows of corn, running my fingers through the rustling leaves, the scent of earth and pollen in the air. They grow so quickly, these sturdy stalks, taller than my head. Following the contours of the hills, the trail bending and twisting, I discover that the time just before harvest is a pretty good time to get lost.

I burrow into the field, its cocoon wrapping around me until the rest of the world fades away. Every so often a red-winged blackbird stops by to keep me company as we share the last days of summer.

Some people look at a cornfield and see just a field. I see a haven, ripe with adventure and silky ears to whisper to. Turn left at the ladybug and follow the sun; a kid knows the very best places to hide. The secrets of the maize envelope me. I close my eyes and immerse myself in the roots and tassels, pausing along the winding path laid out for me.

following the footsteps
of a wandering child
the poet
finds a verse
scribbled in the soil

Contemporary Haibun Online 16:1 | April 2020