Los Avos Del Cielos

This is more of a senryu, but who cares. Smile!


Birds of Florida,
You have snow
On your topmost branches


***

Ducks, cormorants, herons,
All gathered this evening
At the pond

Clearwater

Originally I am from the Gulf Coast city of Clearwater, Florida. In Clearwater we have the Buccaneers, we have Scientology, we have Super Grouper sandwiches at Frenchy's; but most of all, we have a lot of water: Pinellas County's situation between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico ensures that salt water is a constant, sometimes subtle, but always-present theme in the lives of many of those who live there, and I wasn't an exception. It might be dry and desolate in Pinellas Park or Kenneth City or someplace, but from just about anywhere in the county, one has only to drive maybe twenty minutes max before a large amount of water begins to loom in the distance. You can often hear seagulls crying above supermarket parking lots; billboards have shrimp on them...

Well, Jared Erickson and I used to ride our bikes from St. Pete Junior College, down Drew St. or Cleveland to the beach in between classes. Once we stopped at a dusty, microscopic Mexican restaurant on Cleveland St. where the regulars, sullen-looking laborers crouched over their plates, glared at us. Jared ordered sangria in Spanish from the sexy waitress, but it turned out to be nonalcoholic. Anyway, I remember that, while biking over the old drawbridge (they've since built--and rebuilt--a new one) across the intercoastal waterway, you could look down through the metal grating at the top and see the green waves forty feet below. One time while doing this I saw a pod of dolphins passing by under me. When we got out to the beach, we would dive underwater to look for interesting things, smoke cigarettes, talk about girls; in short, we would develop, as much as we could, a modern Florida Gulf Coast version of Tom Sawyer.

One summer, just about every weekday I would wake up early and drive my mom to work at 7 a.m., and then drive her white mid-90's Mercury Sable out to the beach with my skimboard in the trunk. I would just skim around, read, swim, and take naps out there; it was early enough that there weren't many people on the beach. One morning while skimboarding, I went out of control and skimmed right on top of a good-sized stingray. I jumped off as quickly as possible, turned and looked, and--to think of it!--every time a long wave curled up to break, as the early light shone through it, you could see rays by the hundreds slowly moving their wings, flocking north in the surf.

It's funny to think of myself four or five years ago--even more self-conscious, uncertain, sentimental than now!--but also more earnest and with no regret to speak of, sitting on the seaweed with my pants rolled up, salt in my hair (which was thick then), smoking Camels and reading the New Testament while the sandpipers squeaked at my feet. Ha ha!


The sandpipers,
Every now and then,
Walking on the water

Out of Season

Two on the same subject...

When I lived at my family's home in Clearwater, I bought some basil seeds and planted them in some dirt in a classical guitar (with the soundboard broken off), which I set near my back door where the sun could shine on it. Before very long I had a large, healthy, verdant basil plant on my hands. Eventually the wood warped and came unglued due to the heat and frequent thunderstorms, and the plant, after a particularly long dry spell and without proper tending, came to what we can only assume was an undeservedly hard fate. But for a while, those of us at 2239 Rose Lane enjoyed only the freshest of basil leaves with our spaghetti sauce.

Summer rain;
The basil planted
In the old guitar

***

This next verse was written about a year and-a-half ago. I imagine that most visitors who have stayed the night at the house in which I currently live would agree that the shower water can be scalding hot. High electricity bills notwithstanding, it is always nice to dry one's self off in a room full of steam, with bright light shining in at the window.

Scrubbing a shoulder;
On the roof,
Summer rain

***

In other news, there are some new links posted that are worth checking out. One of them will take you to Haiku Harvest, a biannual online and print journal from Maryland; they recently took some of my haiku for their new issue to be published in June. You can read the issue while it is being completed by clicking on the individual names. So, no, I can't whine anymore about not having had anything accepted. Oh well...I guess that will have to be okay...

A Windy Day

Clothes tumbling dry,
A fresh wind blowing
On the window panes


In the strong wind
The hibiscus bends;
Its flowers touch the ground


(I apologize to all the Rhyme Nazis out there in Haikuland for that last one. I bought a copy of Oku No Hosomichi not too long ago which was translated by a British lady; I forget her name, but she has a really simple, elegant, and somewhat old-fashioned style of translating the verses and often uses rhymes. It's true that rhymes can be distracting at times, but all the same there is a clarity and--almost--a contriteness in that translation which bear witness to the fact that a rhyme in a haiku, when used somewhat responsibly, doesn't necessarily lead to disaster.)

1/14/06

Awoken by the breeze,
Crisp little leaves
Fall on the stone table


Clouds gathering,
In the night sky
A white egret

The Scrub Forest

On outlying land owned by UCF, there are some trails that wind back into scrub forest. In case you don't know, the scrub has sandy soil out of which grow palmettos and a couple varieties of pine. Occasionally you'll come across an oak hammock, which may cover a few acres; here are the dignified, stately old Spanish moss-draped trees with thick trunks and branches that arch up to make a low roof overhead. The soil is darker, less sandy, without much undergrowth, and is carpeted with a few layers of dead oak leaves the color of a bread crust.

One of these trails that I mentioned leads you, after a while, to an oak hammock; it's a good lonely, quiet place--many a Psalm I've read there--but it's mildly spooky at the same time. If you search around for a minute, you might find a round clearing in the palmettos nearly adjacent to the hammock: it's about forty feet across. According to my sophomore-year Physical Geography professor--(who was, by the way, a really remarkable, soft-spoken old man; he showed us where to find, among other things, an edible type of pale greenish-white moss that grows on the ground; it's called Reindeer moss and strictly speaking doesn't have much flavor)--anyway, according to my professor, witches would gather there late at night and have rituals and seances and things like that. Nothing really grows in the clearing, it's just empty white sand. To stand in the center of that clearing on a cold evening when the trees are getting darker behind you, and the woods are utterly still...well, that's about as much as I'd like to get into that.

Anyway, if you stick to the trail and get the hell away from there, you arrive later at a clearing of a different sort: the pines become simultaneously much taller, thinner, and farther apart...you can leave the trail and pick your way through the palmettos and get out into the open. The silence is even deeper than at the witches' nook, but clearer and more wholesome, if that makes sense. Especially in the early morning, with the shafts of light slanting through the pines and the occasional doe ambling by, or a snake rustling the palmetto fronds...


In the scrub pines
The mockingbird's song spreads
Among the treetops

The North Country, Pt. 3

The Lake produced some quality fish this year; within the first three days, both Dad and I fought and released the biggest blackies we've ever caught (in a combined fifty or sixty years of fishing that water). His was six-and-a-half pounds and twenty-one inches; mine was its junior at four-and-a-half pounds, nineteen-and-a-half inches. Are all these hyphens normal? In case you aren't familiar with smallmouth, those are true monsters.

Until we got sick of eating fish, the evenings would find my brother and I at the dock, shin deep in the clear water, cleaning our catch with unbroken concentration and the utmost simplicity of mind in the gathering dark. It was usually only about 45 minutes from the time that those bass were hanging off an underwater ledge in twenty-eight feet of water at Highrock, until they were popping in olive oil and breadcrumbs in the frying pan. These fish fries were somehow uniformly excellent despite the lack of Louisiana's Finest, Crystal hot sauce. Afterwards we would watch a Cubs game, read, or sit on the porch. Most nights, after the boat had been docked at the marina, our wives, girlfriends, or family members would receive a telephone call. (It has always been fortuitous that the closest place one can get cell phone service up there is on the road into Dexter, at Jodi's Dairy Bar. Note to travellers: their "small" cones practically weigh your arm down, and one can look for deer in the dusky NY fields on the way there.)

Anyway, everyone got along pretty well throughout the week and had a good time, except that the fishing was wretched for my brother--I'm not sure he caught anything big enough to keep all week. However, Steve Okajec, the ruddy old Clevelander from whom we rent the cottage, did give Ryan the best tomatoes in history in return for doing some yardwork. (Steve is starting to lose his strength. Incidentally, he got the tomatoes second- or third-hand; they were grown by Mennonites in Pennsylvania.)

After a week we packed up, left the cottage and its slightly forlorn-looking landlord, and got a room at the Days Inn in Watertown. There was a small, enclosed courtyard or patio there that was always empty and completely quiet, save for the hum of the industrial air conditioners nearby. It was very leafy, and bordered by rocks and small trees. I wrote a couple verses there; take them or leave them. No delusions of grandeur here.

The coolness--
Raindrops collecting
On the maple leaves

Morning sunlight;
A dandelion seed-puff
Rises up into the sky

To Be Continued. We go up to the 1,000 Islands.

The North Country, Pt. 2

One afternoon after fishing, Dad and I visited his cousin Anne and her husband Jim to give them some bass fillets. They split their year between Texas and the Lake; for a long time they've owned a shady, cluttered little cottage on the water complete with bright flowerbeds and a fat, friendly Welsh Corgy. Of the two, Jim is the more edifying to speak with, but one rarely gets the opportunity because his wife is so prolific a talker and never hesitates to interrupt him. We spent about an hour on their back porch. Their skinny, crooked-toothed daughter and shy little mulatto granddaughter sat on the steps together in the sun, quietly eating a fudgesicle and cherry popsicle, respectively.

Summer breeze;
Goldfinches in the willow
Flit from bough to bough

***

When we first arrived Jim was stooped over a large tub, scrubbing a rug. He probably went back to it after we left.

Today a rug,
Yesterday a young girl--
The aluminum wash tub

To Be Continued. Fishing and activites at the lake. Leaving. At the Watertown Days Inn.

The North Country, Pt. 1

The verses in this series were written on the spot during the most recent of the annual fishing trips taken by my dad, my brother, and I to northern New York (west of Watertown, to be exact). I added the prose later. The first three parts have been posted elsewhere, but for the sake of consolidation I'll put it here on Blogger as well. (There are still enough haiku left for three or four more installments; I just haven't gotten motivated yet to put them all together. Also, I'm not sure where that notebook is.)

***

Having been used to summer in Orlando, the comparatively cool, dry nothern New York air was refreshing! Walking through the airport doors in Syracuse was particularly great; my brother helped me throw my luggage in the Buick, and we drove to the lake. My small, upstairs cottage bedroom looks like a monk's cell right out of Dostoevsky; it has a creaky bed and a perpetually-open window facing the street and land (not the water). It's a very snug room, but tends to make one sneeze too frequently. After drinking one or two cans of Busch outside, I climb the steep, narrow stairs to bed.

Feeling for the light,
A chorus of insects--
Cool summer evening

***

The cottage itself is built atop a seawall on Guffins Bay, Lake Ontario. Barn swallows make their nests in nooks and under eaves along the shoreline, and it's good to sit on the porch, watching their complicated acrobatics and listening to the waves wash over the rocks and algae.

The swallows
Nearly dip their wings
In the sun-flecked waves!

To Be Continued.

Last Year's Haibun

Most of the following were written last July through November. The first few date back to the prime fall hurricane months. They've all been repeatedly rejected by Haiku Publications online and otherwise, but who cares; fuck it. If you are from Florida, you know how the air feels just before a storm at that time of year.

The coolness;
Cockroaches rustling,
The wind in the palms

Rain beats the thicket
But, here inside--
A snail

***

East Orlando Baptist had pumpkins for sale last Halloween. They were sitting on their soccer field; saw them as I drove to work the morning after a big storm had passed fairly close by.

The pumpkins,
Just as they were
Before the hurricane

If you've ever bitten your nails through many Baptist "invitations" you might perceive a wholly unintentional hymn reference in that last one. Anyway, this was written five minutes later, while walking past the retention pond:

The white egret,
Blown away by
A gust of cold wind

***

I got on a big Darjeeling kick last summer at work. I drank about sixteen cups a day. When school is out the workdays are pretty long; you're often working out back and sweating in the heat putting freight shipments together: scoring cardboard, stretchwrapping, banding, building crates, that sort of thing. Usually in the afternoons the thunderheads start to loom, and then the sky darkens; when the first large drops fall hissing onto the blacktop, there's always that good, earthy smell. Do you know what I mean? And it's even better if someone has recently cut the grass.

After work,
Drops of rain
In my tea

***

At 1403 N. Ferncreek we had--and, sad to say, still have--a colony of medium-sized gray rats that are always getting into one of the kitchen cupboards. I caught a bunch of them with traps, but they kept on coming, and are now smarter than ever. I was reading a lot of Basho around the time I broke up with my girlfriend...

In my loneliness
Even the kitchen mice
Keep to themselves

***

Sophia bought me a yearlong pass to Sea World for my birthday last year. Yes, Journey to Atlantis is awesome. No, I don't get tired of touching the stingrays. My only request is please be more creative when you name the newborn killer whales. They name around 80% of them Shamu. This was written one day at Sea World:

The seeing eye dog
Is tentatively sniffing...
Chrysanthemums

***

Finally, here are a couple more assorted ones...must go to sleep...mosquitos and citrus need no introduction around here:

The ripe orange landed
With a thud, and then...
It started to rain

Afraid of the bug-light,
The mosquitos
Hide in the moon

1/11/06

January morning
A tropical plant climbing
The brick wall


January afternoon
The brown finch
Hidden in the grass