summer haiku 5

after the showers

night lamp of cloudless moon glow

chilly crickets hum

summer haiku 4

cerulean eve

Iceland a white memory

as the room fan spins

summer haiku 3

cricket's aria

solo against skin and soul

this human breath, breeze

 

summer haiku 2

black-eyed susans sway

cornflower blues serenade

cumulonimbus 

summer haiku 1

sweat trickling down spine

cricket songs, cicadas trill

murmuring thunder

hugs anonymous

I bought the Friday $3 lunch special at Wegmans (with its absent apostrophe). Hot dog, soda, chips (Fritos). The cost for lunch goes to the United Way. It was sweltering outside. Heavy, dense, the wet heat a blanket. I went inside the cafe area to eat. Cooler. After a few bites, ketchup dripping off, I noticed, almost felt, a figure come toward me from my right, just beyond and then into my peripheral vision. Before my mind could calculate, I'm being jostled, hugged, but not harshly, playfully not violently. Almost the way someone would administer a noogie but this was around the upper body, my chest, my neck. It was a heavyset young man, late teens or early twenties. It scared me until it didn't. Before I knew it, he was walking away. A caregiver was upset. "Don't do that. Stop. You can't do that." The caregiver, a tall young man, apologized to me. I waved it off. I ruminated for a few seconds on semantics. No, we didn't use phrases like "developmentally delayed" as I was growing up. The designations were harsher. And yet in today's culture, America's current environment, let's be thankful I was not armed and quick-triggered, paranoiac, quick to defend, protect, and save myself and all others from all harm or threat.

The Almost Jaywalker

She stood at the corner of West Genesee and Avery, by the Rite-Aid. She had gray hair and was in her late fifties or early sixties. She was in a hurry, or impatient. And confused, as if she was unfamiliar with how to cross a street, when to do it, with the light red, or the light green. She pressed the button on the pole, the button to change the light. She slammed it repeatedly, the way we do that while waiting for an elevator, with no speed-up of results. She was angry at the delay. Slam slam slam. She frowned. She seemed to be taking the whole challenge personally, an affront to her freedom of movement, impeding her progress, hindering her day. The light changed. I crossed the road. I saw her crossing in my rear-view mirror. I traveled south, now looking forward through my windshield, lessening the chance of a collision.

This is America today.