Tag Archives: Haiku

Three Haiku & a trip to Halifax

September 8, 2021 By in Autumn, Bottlecap, Haibun, Haiku, Poetry Tags: , , , 6 Comments

Because of border complications arising from Covid, I drove one of my three daughters to Halifax (rather than fly her)—and that was an 11 1/2 hour drive with no stops. If she had flown, she would have been forced to quarantine for 12 days at a hotel in Halifax, and there were no direct flights to Halifax from the US. So, living in Vermont, why not drive? I’d never driven much beyond Mount Desert Isle. The road in Vermont starts with White Pines, Maple, Birch, Oak, Poplar and as one drives across Maine, the deciduous trees gradually give way to evergreens until, by the time one is driving through New Brunswick, the forests are given almost fully over to evergreens—Red Spruce, Balsam Fir and Eastern Hemlock. The landscape smooths into a gradual, rolling, rising and falling with views of wooded expanses and sky. The bay of Fundy gleams to the south. Just past Moncton, the highway rounds the northern tip of the bay and heads south until it crosses a broad flat into Nova Scotia. There are half a dozen towering wind turbines that turn on the Nova Scotia side.

The video was taken behind the Nova Scotia visitor center.

After that, there was another two to three hours rolling through evergreen forests and fields before we landed in Halifax.


    slowly
        through the wind-turbine's blades—the Milky
            Way

    69 August 30th 2021

I always expect Canadian cities to be more European: That is, I expect a city that’s lived in rather than a 9 to 5 white collar business district; and a hope for a café culture that invites sidewalks filled with drink and conversation rather than the snarling of impatient automobiles and delivery trucks, but in the end Canadian cities are mostly like their North American counterparts in the US. Halifax does seem as though it’s going through a transition. While the old city center is filled with “For Lease” signs, is treeless, cold and uninviting, a new city center, Spring Garden Road, is being gussied up. The power lines, a tangled mess of wires draping nearly every street, strung from telephone poles that are bent with strain, some broken, are finally and properly being buried. Spring Garden street is being narrowed to make it a semi-pedestrian zone. They should simply make it a pedestrian zone and kick out the cars. 


    wedged
        between the lovers' bicycles, the red, shiny
            tricycle

    70 September 2nd 2021

We stayed four nights, then left our daughter and her green backpack at Dahlhausie. That was rough. The last two of my three daughters have left at the same time (though two years apart in age.) I live in a house without the sound of children or teenagers. I’ve always loved children and the sudden emptiness makes me question, all the more forcefully, what to do with the remainder of my life. In a sense, we live for our children while they’re with us; and when they leave some of us, I guess, aren’t quite sure what we’re living for.


    cries
        of seagulls as the tide recedes—autumn
            answers

    71 September 6th 2021