Pebble Walks [Haiku]

crude tracks weave, merge,
 & part on the pebble beach:
  sober drunkards' walk. 

Pillbox Kitsch [Tanka]

what is this place,
 with its defensive bunkers
  on every rise?
 lasting vestiges of war,
  so unlike my childhood home.

PROMPT: Blind Description

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?

Stunningly statuesque and not to be trusted.

DAILY PHOTO: City of the Dead

Silk Road Vagabond [Free Verse]

Dusty trails & caravans.

Traders & spice
  slow walking 
    toward coin.

A thousand merchants,
   a thousand tongues,
     & lingua franca confusion. 

Dazed & dreary 
    every eve.

Wired each morn. 

Sleeping under starry skies
   with long silences between
     bleating goats or screeching hawks.

Dog, companion & security guard,
    barks only when someone approaches,
      and there is so much space 
      to lend wide berth. 

Silk Road vagabonds 
    walk the path alone:
       exploiting and dropping  
       opportunities at will. 

PROMPT: Traditions

Daily writing prompt
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?

Religion and activities related thereto.

Infinite Regress [Free Verse]

The sweep of trees
   forms a mandala.

The eye roams over it,
    looking for a center
      that doesn't exist. 

Those roving eyes
    rove & repeat:
       caught in an 
       infinite loop. 

And I wonder what hides
    in the arc of trees?

What monsters mimic
    the sinuous spine 
        of those pointy trees? 

Whose eyes catch
    the fine light,
       reflecting back a
       burning bright-yellow?

What lives unseen?
    What flows unbidden?
       What empties out, 
           but returns?
           and returns?
           and returns... 

DAILY PHOTO: St. Martin’s Cathedral, Bratislava

Willow River [Haiku]

willow leaves,
 slender and sinuous,
  hang to the river.