DAILY PHOTO: Forest Path

Taken in August of 2011 in Arabia Mountain Park

Double Rainbow [Haibun]

Subsequent ridges fade into shapes, darker and less distinct. The farther down the lake one looks, the lower the clouds hang, until they obscure all trace of the apparent infinity of ridges. In front of the one sun-warmed wall of mountain, two rainbows arch skyward, disappearing into the clouds. One is a weak echo of the other. My Irish mind imagines the arc-segments are full semi-circles -- pot-o-gold, and all that. But the weak one seems to quit before it even reaches the cloud, and thus makes me wonder if rainbows are real, and - if they are - is the weak one as real as the bright one.


double rainbow
arches up from the lake,
stoking pondering

Labyrinthine Lake [Haibun]

Patches of grassy land stand above the water. They lop up the lake into a labyrinth of passageways. Even in a shallow draft canoe, one can often see past the phumdi grass, but still one must know the tiny isles or be trapped among them.

a narrow boat
silently glides between
floating islands   

Bone Mountain [Haibun]

The landscape is strewn with boulders, its topography formed from piles of them, its flat fields dotted with them. These boulders are the remnants of a once mighty mountain -- an ancient mountain. 

People stand in awe of those rough, angular slabs of granite, standing a mile high. But those are the young whippersnappers. 

This mountain is so old that it's just a pile of bones, devoid of connective tissue or fleshy covering. It's a corpse of a mountain that has half buried itself.


the ancient mountain
is now bone-smooth boulders
its age unsung

Spotted Deer [Haibun]

Spotted deer framed in a glade, the warm morning light showing each coat to be a distinct shade of tawny brown. Two deep brown eyes - glassy but lively - keep watch, while the herd hangs heads low, grazing lazily on the overgrown greenery. The deer mill about so languidly that one could count each one's spots.

spotted deer,
grazing in a glade,
one stands sentry

The Perils of Watching One’s Step [Tanka]

looking down
from blue skies and sparse clouds 
my next look up
the ceiling has lowered
and rain is on its way

DAILY PHOTO: Yurts Far Below, Boz-Salkyn

Image

Painted World [Haibun]

The river glides like a glassy sheet. It seems to steam, but it's just fog forming over the frigid water that is nevertheless a reservoir of heat compared to the freezing air above. The fog erases the sharp edges that make the world seem real -- neither painting nor figment. The far shore is a brush-dabbed fiction... and I may be, also. The early morning cold affects my brain in the same manner that the fog influences the scene. 

river fog
makes the cold morning
a painted scene