the Buddha sits:
untroubled by the bees
enticed by garlands.
Stingproof [Haiku]
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Category Archives: poem
“Ah! Sun-flower” by William Blake [w/ Audio]
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
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Trails [Kyōka]
wildlife trail:
a subtle part in the grass;
human trail:
a bald and dusty line..., but
a buck 'd be hell on your rug, too!
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“The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” (1350) by Emily Dickinson
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants --
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet it's whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake's Delay --
And fleeter than a Tare --
'Tis Vegetation's Juggler --
The Germ of Alibi --
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie --
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit --
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer's circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn --
Had Nature an Apostate --
That Mushroom -- it is Him!
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Raptor Rides [Haiku]
raptor rides updrafts:
head & eye swivel-pivot;
all else, glides.
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Making Waves [Haiku]
hilltop puddle
catches gusting winds:
patterns turn chaos.
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“Untitled” [Pronunciation Poem] by Anonymous* [w/ Audio]
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead -- it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose
Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!
* This poem has come to be attributed to a T.S. Watt with a date of 1954. However, the broad divergence of titles and lack of other publication information suggest the alternate possibility that attribution was invented after the fact and has just been mindlessly copied across the internet. I don’t wish to cheat T.S. Watt, if he or she was an actual person who wrote this clever poem, but I also don’t wish to contribute to the spread of false information that happens regularly across the internet. Hence, this note.
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Feeding Frenzy [Haiku]
frenzied pigeons:
a tight, geometric horde—
until food’s end.
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Precarious [Haiku]
boulder on a slope:
one grain of sandstone erodes
at a time, until…
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“A Poison Tree” by William Blake [w/ Audio]
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 