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HAIKUS and HAIKU SEQUENCES
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SEA LIFE Palms shake like Tina. Wind chimes doo doo. Where is the sea? The full moon over the sea has her mouth and eyes. Our upright iguana stands on scaly tiptoes reaching for more sky. The sun shines as rain tumbles through clouds to earth and sea. The hard-riding waves herd fish in droves to the green rocks. Trees are for thinking under. Think twice about palms where coconuts rain. Hard wind, seas and rain, palms bend in storms, but don’t break. Tiny hummingbird shimmering on a wire, safe in the world’s arms. Our morning pool - a siren call for insect swimmers. Insects like Jesus, walking on water, because they can’t swim. Their morning reflections alive in the sun. Blackbirds take a drink, before carrying off wavers to their waiting young. Waving, nodding, breathing, leaning, our palms don’t do social distancing. A storm coming? Clear blue skies, palms waving breezily. Breathe in the moment and let the tides decide time and place. The sun got up, before the sea. Its sleepy eye winking at the conference of birds in our seaside garden.
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TWO SHORT STORIES Cliff is Dead He was in his leathers, only at the inquest the police said his trousers were open. Not like Clifford, Lorna said to herself, kneeling to touch the skid marks. “I do kneel”, she said. “More of a statement.” “Yes”, the policeman said, “it’s only.. on your knees, in that jacket you’re a real hazard. Drivers notice you”. “They’re meant to”, she said. The autopsy showed he’d ‘climaxed’. “It’s the speed” the young policeman said. “Gives them a kick”. Betsy her name was. Dyed hair. Big bust. Finger tattoos. “You shouldn’t kneel. Cliff wasn’t a saint.” Betsy ‘didn’t know him well’, but she called him Cliff, and shared his bacon sandwiches. Lorna called him Clifford, and made his bacon sandwiches. Cliff. Or Clifford. Both dead. Lorna moves on, and got up in dead Cliff’s leathers, she and Betsy open a transport café. They dish up the full English, to bikers drawn up at the scene of the accident, transformed into Cliff’s Corner, the sign over the van. In a story or film perhaps. But Lorna cleared the site, went home to nowhere. She made his two helmets Into hanging baskets, tomatoes In one, nasturtiums in the other. (After Alan Bennett’s monologue ‘The Shrine’) Smoke from the Sixties fire In 1970, at a light near Denver, a mobile home lock combination for weary travellers. “Going out of town”, he said. “Call me when you’re in”, and they did, amazed that they were. Pizza, red wine and beer, filling body and soul in a delirious fat moment. Further on down the road, the gas pumper at Truckee. Motioning to the snowline above, “I’m pretty high”. He was, but they got there, and heard the snow shivering to Nights in White Satin, played on his chain saw.