Here is my poem of the week. You can listen on the video or read the text below. It’s another of my hai-nets, a loosely linked series of seven haiku with some of the characteristics of a sonnet. This time the haiku are stealth–they are classic 5-7-5 syllable counts but the line breaks hide that fact. I wrote this on the morning of the 17th and later Christina cut my hair, thus the discrepancy between the words and image.

first cicada song
cool breeze
through the shady lawn
heats
buzz
around it

weeds high
hair
too long
too little sleep
dizzy
ah
old friend
comes for tea

swallowtail circles
back and
back
to red bee balm
enough?
no
not yet

old poets gather
sip saki and write haiku
savor and laugh long

escape
to deep
woods
while empires
do
what they do
here we make
life
good

empires
won’t
let be
citizens
of spirit realm
they
hate
our peace here

greed is so
silly
how it kills
the life
it needs
poets laugh
to death

7/17/24