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the road behind haiku by Mike Dillon the road behind haiku by Mike Dillon
the road behind
haiku byMike Dillon
theroadbehind
haikuby
MikeDillon
The Road Behind
Mike Dillon
RED MOON PRESS
The Road Behind
© 2003 Mike DillonISBN 1-893959-37-6
Red Moon PressPO Box 2461Winchester VA22604-1661 USA<[email protected]>
Cover painting: Onement, IIIBarnett Newman, 1949oil on canvas 71.875" x 33.5"Museum of Modern Art, New YorkUsed with permission.
Soffietto Editions
For Syd, Paul & Nick
We merely knew it wasn’t humannature to love only what returnslove.
Louise Glück, “The Wild Iris”
The Road Behind
cherry blossoms:the spawning streamflows empty
new calfapart from the herd:evening star
cold motel window:faraway in the duska softball game
after the dayof migrating whales:foghorn
trillium:water shinesfrom deer tracks
Good Friday:tail lights colorthe evening rain
parked bulldozerhalf-done with the house:spring moon
voices, a lanternout on the bay:spring rain
sunset shaftpierces the cloud bank:a foal bends to the pond
cherry blossomshold on in the wind:my dad’s eighty-third spring
spring afternoon:the barber spins me aroundtoward the mirror
blue skywhere the ospreypivoted
thunder:the cruising gullwhiter
noon-busy sidewalk:the dying pigeon’scalm eye
clear-cut:not even an ironicbutterfly
first stars:high on a foothilla light comes on
we men liftthe matriarch’s casket:the lone white cloud
insteadI came here:wind in the reeds
summer afternoon:children hop the wavesfrom a Trident sub
fireworks:the beauty of a profiletilts up
old couple laughingat the deep endof the pool
sunset glow:the ocean still breakswhere those people were
mission navetoo tiny for all butcandid prayer
a warm breezepasses through the wheat:Saturday loneliness
Sunday morning:last night’s full moona pale shell of itself
the last kid pickedrunning his fastestto right field
wooden crucifix:his build the buildof the local peasants
small town stillness:yet that headlinein the local paper
long distance:the screen door slamsback home
wild roses:the slow green riverflows to the sea
drought’s end:the full moon ripplesin the ditch
under starsa bite of peach: Venus
she dangles her white feetin the afternoon stream:crescent moon
I close Issato watch my childrenplay in the tide
the drunk on the dock:a sweetness unwindsfrom his perfect cast
rotten rowboatin the whispering sedge:August noon
roses out of fog:men’s voices somewhereoff-shore
Saturday market:the salmon’ssunless eye
old cemetery:who’d leave daisies for a boygone ninety years?
late August night:the lamp-lit quietas our children draw
childhood home:the smoothness of the half-buried rockwe used for home plate
apples on the ground:somewhere a school buschanges gears
starlit wheat:a quail’s startledwingbeat
post office box:only September’sslant of sunlight
harvest moon:the first spider webin the half-built house
maple leavesdrifting abovethe seiner’s nets
on the river banka spawning king, gills working: the windy maples
the first rain dropspock the river’s mouth:salmon splash
a half-dozen deersift into the orchard:harvest moon
universe of myth, of this:the surge upstreamof spawning salmon
snap! of a stick:my son fails to unbeacha spawning salmon
October hot spell:the hedge never so alivewith hornets
voices ebbfrom the distant purse seiner:harvest moon
chillier dusk: another swirlon the spawning stream
apples in the grass:down-wind from the deerthe poacher’s left
afternoon sleet:a crow peers downfrom the power line
harvest moon:a distant creakingof oarlocks
Thanksgiving sunset:the last three apples glowfrom the topmost branch
early sunset lights upthe long roadbehind
cemetery snowdrifts:so many namescarved in stone
forest silence:a second pullon a distant chainsaw
I walk alone:the constant lightsof a distant freighter
shortest day:snow beneath the cedarwhere our bulbs are
more news of the riverflooding the next county:our louder stream
foghorn night:my coins make a small pileon the mantle
deep thrum of a tugout on the Sound:your sleep-filled warmth
white-caps comb the dark:the hands of the ferrymancount my coins
Orion:you stir in your sleeptoward me
crocus shoots:the empty maplefull of crows
February dusk:I step over the lightlingering in the puddle
almost spring:a slow lantern followsthe low tide
Is Death Like This?
Clear-headed at lastafter a day and night of revelsin which I lost my footing,I find myself on this river bankwhere the dark water flowsthrough the full moon’s silence.How or why, I don’t know, but I’m here.I wiggle my toes, just to make sure.
Spring
So, old friend, you found my gate.Step inside, then, and I’ll show youa stream that flowsinto a peach blossom haze.We’ll follow the path beside itall the way into the forest,into the cathedral lightof old growth cedars.
And we’ll take up, along the waythat conversation where we left offall those years ago.All I ask, friend, when you returnfrom where you cameis you speak the truth:Say you knocked, spent half a dayand found no one worth discussing.
August, For a Little While Longer
When the first day of school arrived I’dclimb back on the school bus feeling as if I’dbeen recaptured by pirates.
And when our bus passed the trout streamrunning silver beneath the alders I gazed outthe window imagining trout flagging deep inthe log shadows without me. Just the weekbefore, in the dwindling heaven of August,I’d been cousin to Huck Finn.
All these years later, each time punctualSeptember approaches, I know there will beno yellow school bus pulling up to throwopen its doors for me.
Getting older has its compensations.Even so, as each September approaches,
my thoughts turn to the summer just passed,and no matter what I did do, I think of thesummer things left undone: the books I didn’tread, let alone write, or the hike I didn’t takein the dry, distant mountains, or the convivialbonfires I didn’t warm my hands by.
And so, at the end of each August, I catchmyself watching the leaves move in the warmbreeze while whispering to something larger:Don’t go. Stay for a little while longer. I ampast fifty now, yet each August brings a home-sick feeling for a home I can’t name.
blue sky, a faint full moon:those words I should have saidlong ago
We all have our end-of-summer rituals.I drive the eight miles from my home to
the Suquamish tribal reservation where thelittle town of Suquamish sits on the shores ofPuget Sound. This was the day of the eighty-eighth Chief Seattle Days, a hot blue noon thethird weekend of August, 1999.
Morning festivities center around ChiefSeattle’s grave in the mission cemetery on aknoll above town. I stand in the crowd as thetribal elders honor the legendary chief.
One of the elders, gazing over the crowd,speaks: “My people live in the past, presentand future. I do not worry about Y2K. Asimple tick of the clock will not wipe out timepast or time to come.”
After the ceremony people of all racesplace cedar twigs on a ceremonial fire—acolumn of white smoke lifts the spirits of thedeparted elders into the sky. Then the crowddisperses, descending the three hundredyards into town for the arts and crafts bazaar,the salmon bake, canoe races and ceremonialdancing.
I remain behind.
Tall firs have grown up to block the viewbetween Chief Seattle’s grave and the cityacross Puget Sound that bears his name.Above the burial mound two dugout canoeson posts aim seaward, true east. The burialmound, surmounted by a large marble cross,is strewn with carnations, daisies and hydran-geas. The cross’s inscription reads: “Seattle,Chief of the Suquamish and allied tribes.Died June 7, 1866. The firm friend of whitesand for him the CITY OF SEATTLE wasnamed by its founders.”
A pair of rosaries hangs from the cross.Placed among the burial mound bouquets—a half-dozen sun-struck clamshells.
my graveyard breath:drum beats beginin the town below
I descend the knoll into town. Across thewater, seven or so miles southeast, the greenshoulder of Magnolia, one of the city’s richerneighborhoods, cuts off all but the tops of thesteel and glass towers of downtown Seattle.Decapitated skyscrapers, like figments fromDali, float there in the warm fabric of air. Tothe south Mount Rainier stands out like asnowy god.
In town the sun beats down on the crowdmilling around the booths set up on theoutdoor basketball court. The wool blanketbooth isn’t doing much business—the free icewater booth is.
In a clearing in the middle of the crowd aslow, majestic circle of dancers, from littlechildren to elders, moves to the solemn beatof drums. Three flags droop in the heat: thestars and stripes, the tribal flag, and a blackMIA flag.
A visiting elder from the Lakota tribe,with black, gray-streaked braids and crispwhite shirt, assumes the microphone. Thedancing stops. Heads bow. Nearly a minuteflows by, then he speaks, saying the gatheredtribes honor the stars and stripes, “a friendlyunit in this area.” He thanks grandfather forthe wonderful instrument he has presentedthem: a drum.
“Grandfather, bless all, each and everyone who came. Also the visitors who are hereto work together. We are here in kindnessand in the nature of love.”
After a while I leave the crowd. I drive afew miles up the shady road to the Suquamishtribe’s fish hatchery, connected to a narrow,salt water bay by a ribbon of a stream. I knowit is too early by a few weeks for the return of
the salmon. I have stood there in late Septem-ber when the stream seethed with twentypound Chinooks fighting the current in or-der to reach the deep pond where their eggswill be harvested.
Now, though, like Chief Seattle’s grave, itis quiet here, with only the soft vocables ofwater flowing beneath the alder shade, thestream brown-gold and empty. In three weeksit will be a different story.
an alder leafspins down:sound of water
In three weeks I will return to this spot towitness the spawning Chinooks’ deathstruggle. Many of those blackened, white-snouted behemoths will have been swim-ming in the Gulf of Alaska for up to six yearsbefore they begin their journey home. Inthree weeks there will be far more leavesfloating on the water. And it will almost betime to plant spring bulbs. The salmon will behere, as surely as Orion will be rising over theeastern firs around midnight.
As August dwindles down I think of thecoming fall and winter and spring. I think ofhow, when the gum-drop colored crocuses of
late winter arise, the crows of autumns pastand future, perched in the budding maples,will already be looking down. And so, one ofthe privileges of getting older, I tell myself, isto see through the calendar days to the cyclesof real time.
It’s something the kids getting back onthe punctual bus the first day of school willeventually have to work out, like all of us, forthemselves.
stars arc toward Asia:a Chinook turnsfor home
Most of these poems, some since revised,appeared in Modern Haiku. The rest haveappeared in Ko, Chidori, Brussels Sprout, WindChimes, Haiku Quarterly, Heron Quarterly ofHaiku and Zen Poetry, Frogpond and Dragonfly.
Additionally, “October hot spell,” “parkedbulldozer,” and “afternoon sleet” appearedin Haiku Moment from Charles E. Tuttle, Inc.
“Spring afternoon,” “the last kid picked,”and “late August night” appeared in the thirdedition of The Haiku Anthology from W. W.Norton & Co.
“the last kid picked” also appeared in PastTime: Baseball Haiku, from Red Moon Press.
“drought’s end” appeared in snow on the water:The Red Moon Anthology of English LanguageHaiku 1998, from Red Moon Press.
“long distance” and “wooden crucifix”appeared in the thin curve: The Red MoonAnthology of English Language Haiku 1999,from Red Moon Press.
ISBN 1-893959-37-6 Poetry/Haiku $12
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Mike Dillon is the publisher ofcommunity newspapers in Seattle,
Washington. He and his wife,parents of two boys, live in
Indianola, a small town on theshores of Puget Sound. He hasbeen a regular contributor to
Modern Haiku over the past 15 years.
the road behind is a collection of 72haiku, two poems and a haibun,and it is possible to see this as a
collection of disparate pieces, butwhat is even more evident is that
it may be seen as a single extendedwork. The unity of vision and
sensibility gradually makes thelocale of this road familiar to us,a road we too have traveled, andare happy to travel again in such
good company.
