somewhere in 
the worn-out elbows
of a mother's jacket
all the hours she spent
lifting up others

it starts with
the cicada
a summer's morning
the pulse of feverish clicks
before slowing down

yellow trash bags
along a stretch 
of adopted highway
the sharpness of a crow's beak
ripping through the plastic

This is not what I would consider a haiku or tanka but influenced by the haiku form. These will be short verses which I will post periodically. This one is dedicated to Hurricane Isaac which reached the Saint Louis area in the form of rain. By the time Isaac got here, it was a tropical depression. The gray skies made me think of the components of depression.

End of the Drought

sorrow returns

in a cold, gray rain

from an anonymous cloud

__________________________

The onset of depression can come without any warning and sometimes without the person’s being aware of what caused it. For me, the “anonymous” becomes a pivotal part of depression’s sequence—that of feeling blue but not being able to pinpoint why.

the football stands filled
for a high school graduation
on the nightly news
Sandusky wears a suit and tie
instead of a prison jumpsuit

This started out as a tanka and became a cinquain, a related form.

monarch

trains heading south

into the trackless air

dew on the engines that push them

onward

in an untelevised
feat of winter olympics
the gray squirrel's
split-second run
into a back flip

after so many rains
exposed and vulnerable
the roots
of a sycamore
grasping the twilight

I am like
the birds that fly
into windows
I mistake them
for doors that will open

I refuse to fall asleep
no matter what they give me
in the operating room
the nurse with the magic marker asks,
"Which eye are we doing today?"