Tuesday morning drive-by

The upside of waking up an hour before dawn is that the Worm Moon was still very visible in the Western sky. Here it is, taken through the screened window of our upstairs bathroom and filtered just enough to render it “cool”.

My drive into work was the usual blur of random observations and thoughts, some of which I attempted to capture on my voice recorder for transcription into haiku-like word fragments.

Dow futures —
a tree filled
with mockingbirds

between the lines
a row
of silent songbirds

Tuesday morning
a dog leaning out
the backseat window

bird droppings
the money I gave away
to lost causes

Dow futures —
ducks floating
in the salt marsh

into a windowless room
the men
who fix the boats

facing the tattered flag
a broken section
of fence

Friday morning drive-by

Photo by Mary

I’ve gotten into the habit of using my smartphone as a voice recorder and dictating my observations and impressions into it when I drive into work. While I confess to doing some spot-editing in my head before hitting “record”, I don’t try too hard to create haiku. The idea is to document what I’m experiencing in real-time — whether it’s a static image or a passing thought — and then to salvage some of those as haiku or senryu.

I don’t know if it’s because it’s Friday or because there are finally signs of Spring here on the Cape (thank you Mary for the photo), but I got a little carried away this morning. So rather than pick and choose where I’m going to post on Facebook and Twitter, I’m going to gather them all here in raw form. You have been warned.

under construction
the convenience store
nobody wanted

through unraked leaves
and road salt
Spring’s first blossoms

cookbooks
escaping the fire
unscathed

amber sky
craving
that first cocktail

looking over
each shoulder
the winter gull

collected poems
scribbled notes
in the margins

writer’s block
the second-hand store’s
empty show window

scattered clouds
when you realize
they won’t write back

up and down the stairs
what I can’t tell you
about love

dream sequence – part 77

I dreamed that I drove alone to a city that reminded me a lot of Albany, NY, where I spent about 3 1/2 years in the early 90s. There was a sprawl of steel and concrete that completely overwhelmed what could have been a picturesque waterfront along the Hudson River.

I’m pretty sure I was there for business — as no one goes to Albany for fun — nevertheless I sought out the hotel concierge for some ideas regarding what I might find in the way of entertainment.

She was frankly overwhelmed, also having responsibility for the front desk and a coffee bar set up in the lobby. I thought better than to burden her further with my petty request. At that moment, a stranger, who somehow knew that I was looking for something to do, asked if I was interested in taking a walk by the waterfront, which was apparently right across the street from the hotel.

This request seemed perfectly reasonable to my dream-self, so I found myself in an urban park stepping on stones at the shore of the river. Still dressed in business attire, I took off my shoes and socks in the event that I slipped from the rocks.

riverwalk —
only
in my dreams

restless night

The overnight forecast called for rain changing to sleet and then to snow some time around the morning commute. I wasn’t overly concerned, as I could opt to work from home if the weather was overly dangerous, but my subconscious wasn’t convinced.

I went to bed early and fell asleep right away, only to wake up from some harrowing nightmares in the middle of the night. At about 4 this morning I startled awake believing that someone was knocking at the front door. Nothing gets by our dog Tito, so I realized it was only a dream, but I still wanted to make sure that our plow guy wasn’t in front of the house. As it turns out, it was only raining, and the knocking was all in my head.

restless night —
a ghost knocking
at my door

I returned to bed but tossed and turned for a while before falling asleep. I dreamed that I was in a big house with my wife, my eldest daughter, and her 4 daughters. My wife had an irritating computer issue I was trying to resolve when one of my granddaughters announced that there was a cougar in our backyard.

When I went to investigate (which I would only do in a dream!), a leopard and several other wild animals ran up a hill in our suddenly spacious backyard. The leopard, sure enough, changed into a cougar before catching sight of me. As I hid myself behind some brush at the bottom of the hill, I could hear the cougar settling above me.

restless night —
a cougar crouching
above my head

In my dream, I reached out for some rocks to throw at the cougar in an attempt to scare it away. In reality, I smacked my hand against the nightstand and startled myself awake.

winter fog

All written in the past 24 hours. You’ll never guess what the weather is like here…

winter fog —
I listen
for my heartbeat

winter fog —
a crow calls out
to itself

winter fog —
the fragrance
of the salt pond

winter fog —
a seagull
on the weathervane

Wednesday morning drive-by

(image unrelated)

Here are some haiku and senryu I thought might capture the ennui of a mid-week morning commute. They were all “written” via dictation to the voice recorder app on my phone and then transcribed with minimal editing.

morning commute —
weathered moss
on a beach house roof

shadowless morning —
I time
the yellow lights

Wednesday morning
I yield
to ghosts

 

Tuesday morning drive-in

Now that my commute averages 45 to 50 minutes each way, I’ve gotten into the habit of “writing” by recording my musings on a phone app and then transcribing them later. The natural beauty along the beaches of Falmouth helps me to settle into a long work day, and then to decompress on the way home. Here are a few tidbits captured in chronological order, with little or no editing between the initial observations and their crystallization in text.

suburban sunrise —
the irrigated lawns
glisten

end of summer —
wild flowers
to my last breath

grand opening —
a new place
to hang my head

seagulls
each the king
of its own island

docked at the shore
someone’s inheritance
rocks with the waves

so close
and yet so far —
a harborside
retirement home

beachside joggers —
my youth runs
away from me