Mountain through Bamboo [Haiku]

through the bamboo
snowcaps catch the morning sun --
what bamboo?

DAILY PHOTO: Helicopter in the Mountains

Taken in May of 2018 near Annapurna Base Camp [ABC]

DAILY PHOTO: Dhavalappan Giri

Taken near Chandravalli Cave on September 10, 2021

Monsoon Skies [Haiku]

monsoon skies
hide behind the mountain,
creeping slowly

Ghost Army [Haibun]

Thick clouds scrape over the ridge. In the foreground, sun-fired sands shine brightly, but the mountain behind has fallen dark, as if it's being marched over by the waves of a ghost army -- formless battalions that block the light. When that marching army reaches the nearer mountain, it will neither stop nor slow, but will crawl overland, coming ever nearer.


the fore mountain shines,
even as a ghost army
closes from behind

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

DAILY PHOTO: Mountain Creek

Taken in Himachal Pradesh in June of 2015

POEM: A Leak in the Sunny Side

Rounding through the pass,
I crossed from the cold
to the sunny side.

But while I transited
from the damp & mossy
to the dry grass
side of the mountain,
I carried the cold with me.

The ubiquitous sun 
would not warm me,
but rather I seemed
to suck the warmth 
out of the world --
as if I were a portal,
and the light landing
upon my skin was shunted
to some parallel universe.

I was the world's window
left open with the heater on,
and the temperature
differential pulled a steady
breeze in my direction,
to who knows where?

POEM: Geologic Time

The boulders' slothful migration
inched them down the hillside.
They moved so slow you'd never know
they were in leaden landslide.

DAILY PHOTO: On Stone Mountain

Taken on Stone Mountain in September of 2011