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

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

Desert Colors [Haiku]

in the desert,
color blooms in dense clumps
among scrubby sands

DAILY PHOTO: Macal River, Belize

Taken near San Ignacio, Belize around 2010 [From Hawkesworth Bridge]

DAILY PHOTO: Evergreens & Mountains, Karakol NP

Taken in Karakol National Park in 2019

POEM: Ripples & Stillness

ripples expand
from some unseen center
where a fish feeds,
and when stillness returns
i welcome its short life

DAILY PHOTO: Rocky River, The Tungabhadra

Taken at Hampi in November of 2013

DAILY PHOTO: Dome of Rock, from Channagiri Hill

Taken in July of 2020 from Channagiri Hill

POEM: Down the Valley [PoMo Day 9 – Haibun]

The air was dry and the valley was dry. Tufts of yellow grass clung to the hillside and to the edges of the valley floor -- where they joined with the barren, brown tines of bleak shrubbery. In the riverbed, smooth stones and boulders sprawled to the shoulders, far wide of the feeble stream that flowed at the moment. The water ran gray, having come from the edges of a glacier that scoured its way down a granite channel. And in the "V" far ahead, clouds as thick as the mountains were being lifted and dropped over a snowcapped peak, pretending they'd bring their moisture into this arid landscape.  
mountain clouds
may become your fog, or
may sit in wait

DAILY PHOTO: Little House on the Himalayan Prairie

Taken in Great Himalayan National Park in 2015