Circle Publications, LLC
Haibun
Virtual Reality
For as far back as I can remember, just before I fall asleep, I reach a familiar place,
a feeling of comfort and calm. It feels real, physical.
memories
of grandmother’s eiderdown
sunset clouds
I’m an accident
You see I’m not supposed to be here.
Sometime in junior high school, I figured out that my parents were a lot older than the parents of all my friends and cousins. This realization played on me and I couldn’t let it go. So, one evening at dinner I blurted out; “Did you want to have me. Was I planned?”
My mother put down her fork, looked at dad, who was putting down his fork and looking at her. Mom stood up and said: “We love you anyway!”
retirement
the laughter
of grandchildren
Ambush
The first time I experienced the emergence of 17-year cicadas, a very clever cat, Dinky, was living with our family. One morning, about a week after the cicadas’ outpouring, I noticed a pile of dead cicadas when walking to the garage. As I opened the garage door, something flew from the bushes. Turning, I saw a bird flying away and dead cicadas scatter as Dinky landed in the pile. I watched as she pawed the scattered cicadas back into a pile and then withdrew into the bushes. My curiosity piqued. Shortly, another bird landed. Out flew Dinky. Again, missing the bird. As her tail flicked in apparent frustration she rebuilt the pile and retreated to the bushes.
inventiveness
can find expression
unexpectedly
Blue Hour
“Let the blue of the sky and ocean take your blue away when you feel blue” (Munia Khan)
These words and the feelings they evoke could not have been imagined, much less written, in the time of Homer or Cicero. Ancient Greece had no word for blue. Nor did ancient Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Hindustani, or Icelandic writings. Egypt coined a word for blue, around 2500 BCE, because it was producing dyes and needed a word for the color. Even then it took thousands of years for the color to be widely accepted as “blue.” All the other meanings we associate with “blue” have emerged over the subsequent thousand plus years.
sipping whiskey
Drunken Hearted Man
set to replay
Immigrant’s Trinity
"There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well." ~ Walter Reuther
In a corner of our living room behind a big chair my parents hung three framed pictures.
A print of Jesus the Good Shepherd..
Their certificates of entry to America from Ellis Island.
A photograph of my father alongside Walter Reuther at Ford’s River Rouge plant.
God and country
in that order.
UAW a close 3rd.
ZIP Code 48217
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Ribbons of smoke spewing from rows of towering smokestacks framed by 250 acres of cracking towers, storage silos, and a gridwork of pipes and steel support frames. The Marathon Oil Refinery as seen from I-75 heading South from Detroit. This complex emits 29 toxins, eight of which are known to produce cancer. Air quality warnings are tragically common for zip code 48217.
relatives
in Woodmere Cemetery
still in the ZIP
Oh Nuts
"Don’t seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you`ll set other people watching."
- George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
On a visit to Sendai Japan, I took a taxi from the train station to my hotel. The trip took us through a large city park. I was surprised when the driver stopped the taxi – I looked out the front window and saw a crow carrying a nut, a walnut I was later told, dropping it in front of the car, it then flew back to the side of the road. With the crow out of the way the driver slowly continued. I quickly turned and looking out the back window saw the crow fly back out and eat the freshly cracked nut. I noticed that other cars were doing the same thing as crows placed nuts in front of them. I laughed out loud; the driver laughed with me. At the hotel, the concierge explained to me that crows have been doing this in Sendai for as long as he could remember.