Step Stone Senryū

a rock that looks like
the perfect stepping stone
is where danger lies

DAILY PHOTO: Mountain Creek

Taken in Himachal Pradesh in June of 2015

POEM: Knee-Jerk Speciesism

Photo Source: Ken-ichi Ueda – 
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/121 [via Wikipedia]
I glimpsed the red hourglass,
vibrating in a stone wall --
a Black Widow spider,
bouncing on a thin web
spun within the void
of an absent rock --
that gap forming the
 spider's recessed hide.

And instead of being happy
that the spider 
had found a fine shelter,
I worried that a child would
stick a careless mitt 
deep into that wall hole,
and be bitten on the hand.

In retrospect,
this seems so unfair 
to the spider.

POEM: Ripples & Stillness

ripples expand
from some unseen center
where a fish feeds,
and when stillness returns
i welcome its short life

POEM: Cloud Life

i watch the drifting clouds
and my mind synchs to their speed
and i wonder whether i'm the cloud
or the cloud is me
and i know that i'm not moving
and yet i feel i am
and i know that i'm not weightless
and yet i feel i am
and i know i can't live aimlessly
and yet i feel i can

DAILY PHOTO: Root Bridges

Taken in 2017 near Cherrapunji in Meghalaya
The Double-Decker Root Bridge

POEM: Frozen Waterfall [Sonnet]

The world stands like a frozen waterfall,
a river paralyzed, impossibly.
And silence replaces its rushing call.
In stillness, it spurns gabbling audibly.

How can a cataract become so hush,
its business being unceasing motion,
spending its days, constantly in a rush,
dispatching raindrops back to the ocean?

Yet, now it's a tower - still as a stone -
that looms like it's never known transience.
Its icy curtain, hard as a shinbone,
offers a wholly different ambience.

I can see its beauty, but am still sad,
thinking the falls should be beyond the fads.

DAILY PHOTO: Rocky River, The Tungabhadra

Taken at Hampi in November of 2013

POEM: Evergreens

Evergreens line the trail,
transporting me to a place --
higher and harder --
where one might expect trees
that refuse to yield for seasons.