“Grief joys, joys
grieve, on slender accident”
--Hamlet
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chunks of this trunk
split with difficulty
twisty pyracanthus
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how impressive the plum
lump
where the firewood hit my
shin
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large piece of driftwood
on a fence post grows
eyes,
a red throat, flies away
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memories come back so
easily
too sick to work or party
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someone
knocks
near the moon’s
reflection
pale
white carp float
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up late, shadows on the
memo pad
writing for no one again
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old wedding plates
stacked on torn newspaper
and tied with
string
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she sits near the closet
and listens to water boil
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as if asking why
she had to wake so
suddenly
the cat jerks and
purrs
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under the shade of wide
strawberry leaves
splashes of red
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by giant artichoke
buds
a neighbor’s daughter
allows one kiss
more
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“these two-by-fours so
sappy
I have to crowbar
them apart”
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while we saw and
nail wood
all day long
the cantaloupe
rind fills with ants
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home late—our small
chrome hubcaps
mirror this night sky and
moon
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on the fridge a
reminder
to turn on
a vacationing
neighbor’s lights
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a sudden gust of wind
pins
half a leaf on the
mailbox
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against drifts of mist
only the lavender’s
leaves
look old and dull
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every morning school kids
stroll by
eyeing ripe berries—
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washing the sushi
lunch box
in the shallows
minnows swim in
and out
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“in another forty years
I’ll be out of this
racket”
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with a thick glass
beer mug
what coins the beggar has
have a nice ring
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fly half-open a relieved
bum
retreats down the alley
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those tools I left
lying around on the job
I worry about them
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on my way to mail
letters—
haunted by a friend’s
suicide—
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he thought his loves
renewed each day but his
life
became one long night
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the hillside buried under
haze—
no view of the bay—too
hot—
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her left
leg’s withered
her left eye closed
she offers me
a cup of water
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with the backyard so
steep
one trip’s enough for a
stroke victim
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“when time and
moonlight allow”
an old poet speaks
of visiting the
unexpected
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detached memories float
free
each one knotty, twisted
and tough
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the wood vise
screw
left worm trails of rust
on the inside of
my thumb
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a neighbor pulls his blue
tarp
over the red wheelbarrow
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each day nearer
the last
so much depends upon
wasting just one
more
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inside the raked
flowerbed
one renegade raspberry
shoot
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last February
a pink wading pool
blossomed
in brown flood
waters
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between straight corn
rows
clear water runs over
packed mud
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By Keith Kumasen Abbott
Related items in this issue of Simply Haiku: Remarks
on Twisty Chunks, by Keith Kumasen Abbott.
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