Deliver me, with magic spell,
with gliding bow and ringing bell,
from this dark and dreary mood so fell.

The clock counts its minutes and its hours;
we obey its rhythmic, ordered powers
in the prisons of our shining towers.

The clock is but an artifice
from a tyrant’s workshop’s abyss.
Time was made for more than this.

Count not the hours, but the beat,
tap it with your dancing feet,
clap it, sing it, in the street.

A flute of bone was made before
the timecard and the clock kept score.
Our forbears knew what time was for.

In the deep woods near,
The trees are poets;
They write their rustling
Lines against a paper sky --
Invited to their mystic house
I am brought to life,
        Embraced and entwined
        Like a prodigal child
                 Forgiven everything --

The forest floor is cool and still
Yet below, the earth is humming
Sweet-scented and loamy
Pulling at some memory that
        Beats ancient in me --

Such tempo'd spells sing
        Among the ferns here:

        Beckoning

putting you on a pedestal
wearing rose-colored glasses
as you rise like a phoenix
from my ashes

I feel stupid
wasting all the years
counting all my tears like a peddler
counts his wares
but couldn’t count on you

I feel stupid
throwing myself at you
making myself crawl
flatten as a paper doll that can’t lift off
the page

I feel stupid
exiguous as a rubber check
a speck on the gilded bed
spread out as eagle wings
clinging as hardened stool
a dusty mule

I feel stupid
sawed off at the knees
fallen as a tree
you holding the axe
I shall not splinter
I'll build a house up from this timber

Disrespect will close
Doors that apologies can’t
Re-open. Be kind




If a haiku is
an insight into a manner of experience
A Haibun
is that story or a narrative of
how one came to have that experience.

"I  like  living.  I have been  wildly,  despairingly,  acutely
miserable,  racked with sorrow; but through  it  all  I  still
know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."  
                                                                          Agatha Christie

As  humans  we  need  regular doses of  unreasonable  beauty,
sublime anomalies, beguiling ephemera, and inexplicable joys.

I  chose  to  be  optimistic,  it  feels  better.  I choose also  to  be
truthful, gentle, and fearless.

Time is really the  only capital that  I or any human being  has,
and it is the only thing we can't afford to lose. Let your choices
reflect your hopes, not your fears.

The past is where we  learn the lesson. The future is where we
apply the lesson.

It is only a short trip. Enjoy it. You are not what you have done,
you are what you have overcome.
                                                       ­                                      Jon York   2024