Gracious Surprise (a haibun)

Last one out
close the door
to my heart

The Janitor hums, sweeping the last of the hallway flotsam info a dust pan, tippinginto the trash barrel with wheels, apparatus to hold spray bottles holding fading solutions, rags, extra trash bags and brooms.  Checks the double glass doors leadingoutside to the courtyard where people eat lunch and flirt on sunny days.  Dark now, crispy leaves skate along benches, colliding with ashtrays and disappearing in tostairwells. Beyond the wooded area, late delivery truck downshifts, aching the sigh of a man lonely for a hundred years.  Shuffling the hall, turning off each light inturn, flickering while closing each door.  Supplies into closet, change smock for jacket and scarf.  Squinting into the tiny mirror attached to the towel rack, hesmoothes hair and puts on a driving cap with half ear flaps folded up and walks outside.  In the shadow, someone somewhat familiar waits for him.

Leaning figure
Gracious in silhouette, leaning
Against grey primer fender

Registering Light or Dark (a haibun)

Delicious dreams
I mumble in my sleep
no memory

Fever – coming on stronger now. Gaining now for three days, delirious fits andsleepless tossing, frantic at random hours. Mind you, body never shivers, mind flashes burning pictures of moments. Some I remember might be called a dream but for the anguish. Too real for a nightmare, the pain, the fever, the malaise gains vigor with each grating snapshot. The unfamiliar seeps with fear, I don’t know howit will end. Each episode so far ends with me waking called waking only in that my eyes crack enough to register light or dark. I twist, fall back into the soaked feather bed drifting, one moment racing a woodencar down bumpy hill, children holler in cub scout knickers, proud with badges, another moment running hard, leaping onto pillars fleeing a unknown enemy ormaybe moving towards one, leaping higher columns tumble into oblivion, my feet slip, slide falling, falling next floating in a long abandoned warlord’s damp stronghold dungeon, somewhere atop a Teutonic hill slope, the moon shows the shackles through window slits. Warm and next a campfire warming feet and drinking from a flask as I mumble – fading eyes see nothing but white robes walking by from time to time.

Memories sequestered
Releasing now
As tea steam

Driving towards Remembrance, Saskatchewan (a haibun)

Clear drops
on muddled windows
muddled thoughts

Saskatoon, snow drifts over wheat fields, kids skating in toques, playing shinyhockey until mom calls them to eat St. Jacob’s soup and thick heels of sourdough bread. “I got this yeast starter when your pa and I married,” she says to no child inparticular. Driving home, the road straight in snow chasm, walls pushed high by plows. Wipersscrapping, Am radio crackles minor league hockey scores, exclaiming local boys traveling by bus all night to play in Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Fort St. William, John, Albert or James, Moosejaw, 100 Mile House or maybe Moncton, New Brunswick for the Memorial Cup.  Acclaimed for dedication, perseverance, valor; intangibles – heart, character – playing in rinks named for citizens, soldiers and towns.

Rolling east
O’er muddled roads
Grinding towards remembrance

Bivouacked with books (a haibun)

Room close dark
dark, listening – white noise
and windchimes

From my perch, survey the still life before me – a didgeridoo leaning against a wormwood bookcase, 4 thick shelves made from free form curly maple looking like slabs of bacon, books stacked horizontally for easy reading of titles on spines; Ulysses, Siddhartha, Tolstoy, Salinger, Dr. Seuss, a stack about Everest, old Edmund Hillary grinning under shaggy beard and leather edged goggles. BhagavadGita, with dead,bald smiling, reincarnated onto the dust leaf resting, leaning next to Don Quixote, heavy in four volumes with hand-cut pages, raised ink, tissue protects the engravings.A collection (complete) of TinTin the intrepid reporter (Belgian I think), his dog Snowy and ornery ole Cap’n Haddock. More adventure than John McPhee, him traipsing from Alaska to Bangladesh – lonely freighter pulling out of dark harbors, a thousand iron feet long tended by six – maybe eight scattered souls. A Russian Matryoshka doll – endless stream of smaller beings, a lighter from Belikin – the state brewery of Belize, a metal Sierra Club cup, engraved with highest peak in Nevada and a date so long ago that I look at a photo to remember – me, head in clouds, wearing a sweater I forgot I ever wore. Picture is snowy, the tin cup stained withheat, left holding coins from here and there, a yo-yo, and buttons fallen off of trousers.

Room collecting stories
To tell you
Some other time