Raptor Rides [Haiku]

raptor rides updrafts:
head & eye swivel-pivot;
all else, glides.

Making Waves [Haiku]

hilltop puddle
catches gusting winds:
patterns turn chaos.

“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.

Feeding Frenzy [Haiku]

frenzied pigeons: 
a tight, geometric horde—
until food’s end.

Precarious [Haiku]

boulder on a slope: 
one grain of sandstone erodes
at a time, until…

“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.

Survivor [Free Verse]

What a thing to return from war --
a survivor --
To find that so little has survived:
Not the grass, nor garden,
Not the roof, nor lintels...

The homestead, an overgrown ruin:
Like a remnant of a once great
Civilization that was one's
Peace of mind.

Lily Pad [Haiku]

lily pad sprawl:
herons march, beak-down,
on the shifting surface.

“Swordsman” by Jia Dao [w/ Audio]

Ten years honing this fine blade,
And it has not drawn blood.
Now, you'll see of what we're made:
Who, wronged, is owed in blood?

The Original: 劍客: 十年磨一劍, 霜刃未曾試. 今日把示君, 誰有不平事.

Vortex Drop [Tanka]

drifting toward falls,
a leaf twists & pivots
-- as if frantically --
as if to avoid the fall,
then slips over & glides.