Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

At Red Willow Canyon
by Mark F. Harris, Princeton, New Jersey
Across a table on a roadside near Taos Pueblo, a boy with
Down’s syndrome hands me a small clay bear with a painted
arrow heart. I’ve been haggling with his mother over a blackon-white
pot. She needs the money; I want the thing because
it’s old and well-made and beautiful. Her voice carries the
cadence of another language; is she among the few who still
live within the pueblo walls? For the fi rst time, we look hard
at each other. Her forehead and broad cheeks are lined from
sun exposure. Strands of gray streak her black hair. She can’t
or won’t disguise a look of need and fi ght combined. What she
sees... I buy the bear and thank them and leave.
copies of an old contract the sky’s edge
The things I throw away
by Michele Root-Bernstein, East Lansing, Michigan
: half read issues of The New Yorker, paper clips bent out of
shape, clothes I only think I want to wear, cheap novels lacking
possibility, corn husks though they might serve to make
tamales should I learn to make tamales, stale ideas of who
I am, issues of The New Yorker I only think I want to read,
clothes lacking possibility, cheap novels bent out of shape,
ideas that might serve me in another life should I awake to another
life, stale things and who I might be in all possibility...
spring cleaning
i rearrange a vase
of lost feathers
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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