haiku 俳句

let in this morning

our kitten still tracks the dew

through cold wooden rooms

露の朝猫の足跡床に染み

walking the dry fields 

returning from the station

the year's first sun

初日の出 駅から歩く枯れ野原

in the tall grasses 

a boy collecting crickets – 

the hazy moon

少年は草にコオロギ朧月

is he still waiting

on the hill along Snake Pond –

the wind in the pines?

丘の上まだ松風に雄蛇ヶ池

(Appeared in Tinfish)

Three Senryu ・ 3川柳 ・ Lost in Translation

 

1.

The boy liked to roll in waves
filling his clothes with sand
and walk in spring rain

子の服が浪砂にまみれ雨遊ぶ

 2.

Crabgrass rising in my lawn,

the retired fireman smiles crossing the street

草茂る鎌持つあやじ暇の笑み 

3.

Behind the building the summer moon hides for the long windy night

風が吹くビルに隠れて月涼し

(Tacoma 2003; Tamsui 2012; photos by D. Brink; thanks to Prof. Horikoshi Kazuo for help polishing the Japanese versions)

Noir Respite from the Recovering City

D. Brink, 2007

A country boy has more time on his hands,
is used to a lull before a friend arrives,
but once the haggling gets going
the headache of it all again
pans out. Inside a week
he’s offering mother’s sandwiches
and his pulse falls to a whisper…
whatever he had to say folded in
the chiaroscuro of the whipping
action of a spatula
in - what drew Caravaggio
I’m sure - the heartrending drum roll
of being so close, almost welcome,
yet broken by encroaching said hinterlands
ever demanding, wilderness abutting
where wolves know when to wallow
in a varicose dawn where yakety-yak alarms
resurrect zombie video game mobs for the du jour
dangling off in pickup trucks down roads less traveled,
the whole kit and caboodle tuned to the conglomerate
as if nomadic time were a luxury
and we were never anywhere anyhow,
never taking a load off the dialectical day
of drifting into subsistence cage effects,
broadcasts inoculating the local grange,
fears bleeding into any film noir dolly or pally.

(Tacoma 2003; Tamsui 2012)