Step Stone Senryū

a rock that looks like
the perfect stepping stone
is where danger lies

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?

Hawk Kyōka

I watch the hawk
as it sits, watching me
It turns away first,
knowing I can't reach it
nor see it as it sees me

POEM: Fairy Tale Wisdom

We watch the naked emperor
like nothing is amiss,
and recoil upon sight of frogs
wise of what lies in a kiss.

We trust the familiar too much,
and the odd too little.
We love a beauty even when 
she's selfish or she's brittle.

There is a Jack for each giant,
and many clever cats,
and, sometimes, we cheat the man who
takes out all our rats.

The other foot will always fall,
even when blinded by hope.
Sometimes it pays to play dimwit,
but not be an outright dope.

Each tale tells us of ways to be
a better, kinder soul
in a world filled with all manner
of monster, fiend, and troll. 

POEM: Below the Stone Dome

The stone dome
bubbled from the jungle
stands stern
like a knob of nothing.

The green growth
that girds that whole hump
is living, like 
some hallowed habitat --

filled full 
of all forms of flora,
with big bugs, and
 all the creepy creatures.   

POEM: Knee-Jerk Speciesism

Photo Source: Ken-ichi Ueda – 
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/121 [via Wikipedia]
I glimpsed the red hourglass,
vibrating in a stone wall --
a Black Widow spider,
bouncing on a thin web
spun within the void
of an absent rock --
that gap forming the
 spider's recessed hide.

And instead of being happy
that the spider 
had found a fine shelter,
I worried that a child would
stick a careless mitt 
deep into that wall hole,
and be bitten on the hand.

In retrospect,
this seems so unfair 
to the spider.

POEM: A Salty Tale of Blue Skies

The culling ships came, and
brought us deep, blue skies.

Those who never saw them
could not have suspected
that the fast, mad machines
were about to crash hard,
as if on rocky shores,
and no one would be left
to tell our salty tale -
except those azure skies.

POEM: The Power of That Which Bumps in the Night

The last lamp out
dips the room into darkness
[sudden darkness]
and in the nothingness,
before vague shapes form,
a clunking sound triggers the
stab of an adrenaline spike
into ones chest --
mainlined frisson, or fright:

the heart thumps,
the chest cinches,
the stomach lurches,
breath is sipped spastically,
and an involuntary noise escapes 
from some unnamed place within.

The power of strange and startling 
thuds and whumps 
has fueled many a storybook, 
but though the mystery
is rarely solved,
we get over it soon enough. 

POEM: Lighthouse Keeper

The lonely lighthouse keeper,
peering through a deep-set but narrow window
at waves smashing onto the rocky shore,
spouting upwards in a fanned geyser.

So much depends 
upon his maintenance of momentum,

but the better things go,
the more dreadfully boring is life,

and when things go poorly,
there are russian roulette
odds of tragedy.

Like life on a mountain,
but when someone crashes 
into the mountainside,
the mountain-man
is an unlikely participant
in the tragedy.