holding its children up
to the sun
The image sparked the haiku, and when I went to post it on Instagram, I saw that Noah Davis had a post of himself reading poetry in his tomato patch, so I dedicated the haiku to him. Noah grew up around here, and he and his father Todd Davis (also a poet) hunt deer on our mountain, so I’ve kind of watched him grow up. His first collection, Of This River, was one of my favorite reads of the past year.
the satellite’s
dark cargo
Combining two recent photos and adding a noir effect and text, all in Snapseed.
sad face circled
by a moth
Night-flying moths will come to pale faces for the same reason they come to a light, I think: their navigation systems have evolved to orient by the moon, which of course is constantly changing, so they have to be flexible. So I’m afraid that countless generations of Sufi-influenced poets have gotten it wrong: moths don’t fly into a flame out of mad passion. They’re simply lost.
The image is a shot of sulfur shelf mushrooms from above, processed in Snapseed. I wanted something that looked like a Creator’s rough draft of moon, moth, or face all at once.
no hint of Canada now
in these local geese
root hairs on a toppled tree
are the only gossamer
a doe follows the bootprints
as far as she can
collects enough leaves to make
its own woods
the dark sky dissolves
into snowflakes
