HAIBUN


Sundays i take my laundry down to “Hord’s Ridge”, where my parents have a washer i can use; & when it needs it i mow the lawn. Hord’s Ridge is an older suburb, long since fallen on less gracious days, but lately revitalized by an influx of Latino bourgeoisie. I lived in their house through the Seventies & half of the Eighties, with somewhat lengthy excursions during the last phase. Whenever i was there, i mowed the grass.

In our climate that’s a task requiring circumspection, & endurance. It has to have not rained in a week, so there’s not moisture at the base of the long St Augustine blades--impossible not to think of the doctrine of “predestination” when i hear the name--(for i use an electric mower); but you want to start early, before it gets hot. At the same time, there can be heavy dews right at dawn. All in all, it’s not a reliable way to make twenty dollars, yet seldom has there been a time in my life when i could lightly turn down even that token payment.

As i push the mower, i often have philosophical thoughts, or i compose a poem in my head. Although the presence, right there in my old room, of so many unpublished manuscripts & unwanted artworks, would tend to act as a brake on any future productivity, in actual fact it doesn’t. And once in awhile i get to complete a years-deferred project.

follow the border
where just cut grass yields to tall
and dewdrops linger

I found out a friend of a friend of my wife’s has a program that will enable me to publish-on-demand a xerox picture-poembook i made in 1975 or so, & persuaded another artist to illustrate (some 13 years later), but never made more than a couple copies of. This book, Star Grope, is dear to my heart because it was the first output of a word-randomizing program i wrote while still in highschool--under the influence of William Burroughs. Will this be the moment of that work’s fruition?

touch the old porch swing
caked with dust from two states
and still, like the air

8-1/3-04

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