how short a walk, back turned to the city, to be free.
Into the Woods [Haiku]
3
A long time ago,
I listened to the audiobook of
Kerouac's "On the Road."
In that format,
I became aware of how often
Kerouac used the word
"rickety."
Almost as aware as I became
of how often Twain uses
the N-word in Huck Finn
when I unwisely listened to
that audiobook while driving
through downtown Atlanta
with my windows rolled down.
I'm now reading Hunter Thompson's
"Kingdom of Fear," and I've become
aware that Thompson had a love
of the word "gibberish" almost on par
with Kerouac's love of "rickety."
And I think about how much beautiful
rickety gibberish I've read from those
authors, and what a fine
thing it is if one can write
rickety gibberish that stands up
under its own weight.

guardian dogs,
sculpted or painted: how do
they fool the spirits?

grand monuments,
overgrown with moss & weeds,
for Dead long forgotten.

boats rise & roll
with constant motion; as
gentle waves lap ashore.
Stationed in East Anglia,
I remember layered fog,
fog so thick one couldn't
see past the hood's end,
but, given a slight rise,
one could see all the way
down the runway -- as if
it was a cloudless full moon eve.
As one might expect of an airbase,
(having been built around a flat runway)
there wasn't much topography.
But sometimes life is like that:
a tiny rise in perspective
allows one to see the world clearly,
but a minor dip puts one in a
soup of unfathomability.