Richard Grahn

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