an old writer and his words

  • EDGE OF WINTER (FOUR HAIKU)

    The clouds build slowly threatening to overtake the maple’s red leaves. October cloud knives Slice branches from saddened trees Leaves fall in mourning Dogs peer at dawn’s sky And slowly don winter coats Knowing geese take flight Tomorrow the snow Will not fall from evening clouds But soon, very soon

    Lou Faber

  • DROPPING

    As night settles in the clouds grow uncertain of their intentions. It is hard to realize that a boundary is silently crossed and summer has retreated into the past, leaving a new season in its wake, harder to know that tomorrow we will awaken into an autumn that at first seems no different then her…

    Lou Faber

  • MARCHING ON

      He notes with alacrity that modern man has stripped all logic from time, rendering it an arbitrary temporal system based on mechanics, and even that is quadrennially imperfect. Once it was seasons, which came and went in orderly fashion, but heating was never a science then. Later it was the moon a reusable calendar…

    Lou Faber

  • INSTRUCTIONS TO THE NOVICE HAIKUIST (AND AN EXAMPLE)

    INSTRUCTIONS: Make certain that you carefully count syllables and mention summer   EXAMPLE perhaps not a bang certainly not a whimper– summer’s arrival.

    Lou Faber

  • THREE THOUGHTS (HAIKU)

    The pelican dives beneath an ominous sky – this is no Koi pond. Snowy egret stares, his reflection returns it calm pond undisturbed. Haiku is perfect if you adhere to the form in all four seasons.

    Lou Faber

  • PROGRESSION

    It is between the pushing away in the pulling back that it happens. It is there that the seasons progress, one to the next. Winter cedes to spring and is, ever reluctantly, replaced by summer. It is there, as well, that the leaf emerges from the bud and reaches into the sky. And feeling the…

    Lou Faber

  • PADDIES

    At first it is a checkerboard of ponds neatly arrayed, reflecting the sun, the work of man, for God so rarely plays geometrician with creation, less often still using right angles. Soon enough green blades reach up through the shirred surface, random, reaching for a sun they can never touch. Later, it is a field,…

    Lou Faber

  • MILES FROM HERE

    Some say Miles said it’s the space between the notes – that’s where the music is. We heard him, we smiled, we anticipated the next note and the next. Outside my window a blue jay recites his morning prayer, the child’s laugh breaks the frozen sky and shivers the maple. Then all is silence –…

    Lou Faber

  • BASHO’S DREAMS

    on the sacred lake lotus blossoms grasp the sun Buddha steps lightly   Buddha cares little for the endless prostrations preferring Summer   setting summer sun turns the river to purple moon comes from hiding

    Lou Faber

  • A SMALL GARDEN (HAIKU)

    sitting, time biding leaf floats down from branch trampled under foot   road salt crusts over etched into a chrome bumper the heron returns   pine needles a bed for the deer and the hunter tall pines cry leaden tears   tangled broken branch dangling from a barren oak awaiting spring rain   giant cranes…

    Lou Faber