summer solstice haiku

               the shadows are long

when night finally comes

twenty years ago father's day

 

i have this on my desk at work.  i look at it every time i'm in the office but on friday i picked it up & really looked at it.  the year on it is 2006.  nick must've been around 18 months old.  twenty years!  twenty short years feels like this father's day gift was made just last year.  & in those twenty years anna & i have watched nick grow into his own special, wonderful person.  a young man of remarkable abilities.  i say that as a biased father, no doubt.  but being a father to nick is the best thing ever.  in the early days of his life i'd write about him all the time.  i don't now.  because he can tell his own stories.  he is possessed of his own life created in a style of his choosing.  nick is twenty-one years old as i type.  already he has had great adventures of the kind that blow my socks off.  adventuring of the kind that are the subjects of books.  again, he is the author of his stories.  not me.  what i can do is provide love, kindness, & courage to nick in my own flawed style that might help nick become his own human being.  he is the greatest father's day gift.  i am nick's father.  it is the best thing i will ever be.  

buenos noches!

 

hot norwegian summer nights

1.

second in line at the ATM in downtown bergen

the guy pulls his card from the machine

turns to me & says something i can't understand

--what?

--oh, you are american?

--yes

--give me your card because mine no longer has money in it!

2.

it was a long drive thru the fjords 

majestic beauty 

the kind that i thought only exists in paintings

watching a movie on TV 

at the hotel

i look out the window

a fat cloud slowly scuds past

at eye level

beyond it are hills drafted in granite

& painted green with grass 

with a pique of grey at the top

i am in bed & i am flying

3.

i confess

i broke the law

at the bergen aquarium

i reached into the display

& set off the alarm

don't forgive me

i knew what i was doing

& i would do it again

4.

i think of a few thom gunn lines:

'we are the same in different ways

we are different in the same way'

thai food served by a thai woman 

hot food for a hot summer night in bergen, norway

5.

it was here at the top

overlooking bergen

the ride in the funicular

the expansive views 

of the city & the bay 

a troll, yes, a giant troll

the kind my grandmother 

populated her house with

spanked my bottom

don't ask me to explain

i am only here

to tell the tale

wartime haiku

               walking the dog

was that buzzing a fly, a wasp

               or a drone?

bedside stack

 

one sentence summer haiku

 out the office doors friday goddamn it's hot enuf to fry an egg out here!

liminal space haiku

after watching backrooms [2026]

walking the busy streets home

the broiling sun on the horizon

these crowds 

shades in the spaces between space