Nearby a wasp lights,
twitching its pointed stinger
in the summer heat.
As I drive my car,
an eagle flies overhead.
How far have I come?
An ant climbs slowly
up the old man’s hairy arm.
He flings it away.
Continuously,
the rooster crows all day long.
He is barely heard.
The price of rice falls
and rises constantly in
the heat of summer.
A man’s eyes tear up.
He is eating hamburgers
with sliced white onions.
A robin pauses
atop a neighbor’s link fence,
a moment’s respite.
After lawn mowing,
a sparrow searches for food
in cut blades of grass.
I am awakened
by a neighbor’s idling truck.
I close the window.
The bright, full, round moon
at the touch of a finger—
electricity.
Ransetsu observed
the Milky Way at midnight—
a spray of fireworks.
Rectangular bales
fill fresh-cut fields of hay in
the heat of summer.
Shining orange pink,
sun’s bright-beaming rays light up
peach tea in a glass.
He sat high upon
the chair before the counter,
as the rocket launched.
Mount Saint Helens was,
in my youth, as perfect as
Mount Fuji now is.
Featured Image:Mount St. Helens, Columbia River, Oregon by Albert Bierstadt
After Albert Bierstadt: 4 August 2013
I never once in all my life saw either Mount
Saint Helens or Columbia as Bierstadt did
in his quaint painting. Still, that’s of no account,
unless he was a colour-blind or near-sighted.
And yet, I like his strange rendition of ‘t: the purple tint,
the luminous snow-fountain, nature’s pyramid,
above the misty horizontal, like a tent,
and evergreens that mingle with deciduous,
cascading downward from the left, touched with a hint
of sunlight—neatly done, if not assiduous.
Here is no town—no human habitation crowned—
just hills and tall peaks rounded with coniferous.