A Haiku

Can fish perceive pain?
Some of us say they cannot,
so we can hurt them.

December 12th, 2018: For K B D

I remember the exact instant I knew
that I had surrendered my heart;
when your eyes drifted towards the floor
and off to the side,
shyly voicing your love for me.

I remember every sensation:
the dim sounds of a party
two doors down, the light from the hall
timidly peaking in under the doorway,
the zippers of your sweatshirt
a rough contrast with the soft warmth
of your bewitching body.

I remember our joyous union
as you pressed your mouth into mine
for the first time, as if our souls
embraced and kissed with our bodies.
Never before had I felt
so close to another human being,
never before had I felt such bliss,
such rapture, as I did
that night in your arms.

Now, every time we kiss under the stars,
every time you look up into my eyes
and tell me that you love me,
that moment reoccurs:
As if somewhere,
beyond time,
beyond space,
beyond forgetting
and beyond remembering,
our souls remain
locked in an eternal first kiss,
joined together in a passion unbroken
and untouched by our humanity.

October 27th, 2018

The leaves have fallen
from the trees,
the sky is grey, like
the ancient, monolithic
glacial boulders.
A soft, chill breeze
blows from the lake
and freezes my
breath in the air.
Summer is fading
into winter,
dying slowly like
a grandmother with
dementia. Mother Nature
no longer remembers
the joyous heat or
the tender leaves of before,
instead giving us
the frigid winds of change.
Like the seasons,
everything changes,
everything fades and dies.
Like the green forest
winnowed down to twigs
by the cruel North Wind.
And it is as grim
as the storm clouds
coalescing ex nihilo
against the horizon.

I was afraid.
Terrified, even
paralyzed
with fear.
But that’s all
gone now.
Like a vapor
scattered
on the breeze.

Happiness
traces back
to only one,
for me.
She’s so
beautiful
and strong,
and her hair
is soft and red
like a fox’s.

Oh how
I love her.
Beyond words.

More than
every contour
of every leaf
on a forest,
fall yellow
like an oil
painting.

More than
the sudden
spasmodic
fits of gentle
laughter
that make my
entire upper
body vibrate
like one huge
drumhead.

More even
than the
hidden,
distant stars,
sparkling
imperceptibly
through the
misty clouds.

She makes
my arms twitch
with excitement,
my body aching
to embrace
her and hold on.
With her head
on my shoulder
this world really
does seem so
much brighter.

You can go there.
It’s easy, really.
But once there, you
cannot tell anyone
what it was like.

An experience
must be felt in
order to be believed.
Otherwise it’s just
an idea in my head.

But like a horse
shying at shadows
some of us flee,
cantering away
when our time comes.

The setting sun
sings me to sleep,
the dark morning fog
welcomes a new day.
A new day to try.

And fail.

We cannot see it
without light, yet
the light itself casts
the fearful shadows.
So we hide from it.

What was it like?
You cannot tell me,
once you were there.
It’s easy, really.
Why can’t I do it?
Why can’t I?

I once read a story about an ant
who set his mind to move a mountain.
An insect, a millimeter from jaw to legtip,
laboring against a mass of stone and
soil quadrillions of times his size.
But he worked
and worked
and worked
moving the bedrock one dram at a time,
year after year, season after season,
each trip melding into the next in an
endless march of mindless labor, until
where the mountain once stood,
a peaceful valley sank down. All because
of the labor of one very determined insect.

At the end of the fable, the writer tells us
never to give up, for what we choose
to work and persevere towards
will surely happen if we truly try.
As I read the story, I knew he was right.
Never give up.
Even if it takes a quadrillion trips,
1,000,000,000,000,000 trials,
before the mountain bows to you.
Even if your small, insectoid mind
cracks like a candy-cane under a sandbag,
even if you collapse and die after 6 decades
of exhaustion, millions more left to go.
Never give up.
Even if your task is impossible, and it
destroys your life, everything you love,
everything that makes your little ant-soul tick.
Never give up.