Vacant Lot Haiku

William Keckler

·

Follow

2 min read

·

Feb 5, 2019

--

Listen

Share

vacant lot
wildflowers
holding someone’s mail

red balloon
in a cemetery
holding your breath

a button
in the street
evening speeds up

in the woods
a snake passes before me
before I pass myself

snake spotting
deep woods
time sheds its skins

deep woods
your time not mine
holds my hand

everything only
borrowed light
speaking

long after
the reflection
the light

Kato Shuson
the wildflowers
your soft grenades

garden we planted
then let go–
its strange shapes entwine

raging sea
finds one soft spot
in a boulder

bubbles
in ancient glass
hand-me-down windows

empty coffee cup
one continent
pushes another

morning diner
the first one seated
keeps his coat on

her desk’s peeled orange–
a skyscraper
sways in wind

manhole steam
in the night things not words
gossip

bird’s snow trill
all the wasted flutes
in my bones

night coming
a period
grows a tail

a dragonfly
collects energy
from a hot tombstone

morning diner
the waitress pours coffee
from another lifetime

a Monarch unfurls–
as many ways to be born
as die

mushroom
if you touch her house
ghosts emerge

a country
a rain puddle
collects rain

the waitress’s smile
a pink packet
sugar substitute

morning diner
he tells a teen waitress
why suspenders matter

things are far
from their birth–
a worm in rain

frost window
my reflection
must be away

diner parking lot
sparrows kill time
until McDonald’s opens

his family dead
an old man finds new enemies
at a diner

mark on glass
from a dog’s nose
not sure which side

old men’s diner
all the coats
are far too big

night’s stars
tell a story
breathless

morning diner
two octogenarians
plot a new country

the wind–
a child’s
half-finished drawing

winter diner
a waitress forgets
Proust’s name again

small diner
a truck with Trump stickers
takes up two spots

starfish–
a blind hand
shows you its teeth

starfish
all night dream
they are starfish

the morning
pretends to be an image
again again

orphaned train car
spring nestlings
sing of new hair

a stone
its starkness
fuzzy in my mind

one room schoolhouse
there’s a wasp trapped inside
local history

a peach’s fuzz
some are aroused
by armor

listening to trains
from a bathtub you say
you don’t say

winter diner
nobody young here
but the sparrows

trains and bird trills
morning’s metallic
in sound

birds then trains
morning sounds
meet with silence

a houseplant grows
largely ignoring
nonessential input

funeral hands
people touching people
as autumn does

empty milk jug
in the fridge
as a memo

airplane overhead
sound waves in my body
want to go somewhere