From the collection published in 2021, The Immediate and No Sooner.
Haiku 852
8/24/20
a hot afternoon
tucked back here in chartreuse shade
with a buzzing fly
Haiku 853
8/24/20
if you let them choose
every one of them will take
the other sidewalk
Haiku 854
8/24/20
the nurse in blue scrubs
gulps her stand-a-spoon coffee
in the parking lot
The last poem is a very well-observed character study. Although I don’t drink coffee, I absolutely understand that desperate attempt to push through debilitating exhaustion. The first poem really captures one of those sounds of summer.
I don’t drink coffee either, but I see many people who really rely on it. I did see this person as described in the poem and I could feel her sigh of ahhhh as she drank.
That second haiku somehow put me in mind of summer school!
Now summer school is something I have not thought of for a long time.!