it's not the steps

or the four flights of stairs

to room 458--

what bothers me is knowing

that you won't be there

the machine precision

of cubed carrots

in canned vegetable soup

one man's first step

towards bachelorhood

revised tanka:

january ballet

of dancing on ice

no one has trained me

how to fall or how to fail

gracefully

original version:

surviving the latest storm

I slide down the ice

on the driveway

and regain my footing 

in the snow

the test results

on my phone ignored

day of the dead hike

one last hill to climb

before going home

haunted hayride

the ghosts of headlights

on a divided highway

the civil war cave buried

under this road

*The cave was located near Powder Valley Conservation area. It was destroyed during the construction of Highway 270.

I'm sure there was cake

and a balloon or two

I'll keep singing, "Happy Birthday,"

even though you stopped listening

a long time ago

with feverish

intensity

the autumn leaves

and my desire 

to walk with you again 

Das Unheimlich

"...intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as it were, be something one does not know one’s way about in."

~Ernst Jentsch, On the Psychology of the Uncanny

a turtle's shell slowly

decomposing in the weeds

of a cemetery

how many unmarked remains

under these stones

her memories

the plucked strings

the end notes of sadness

this is not how to play the violin

but how to feel it

I am reposting a tanka written several years ago. My mom painted the ceramic cat to honor our 12-year-old cat who had recently died. Today is also the anniversary of when my mom passed away. We miss you.

the flowered cat
in its new home
her eyes catch
the same sunlight
you had while you were painting