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

Release Me
by Wende Skidmore DuFlon, La Antigua, Guatemala
The rainy season has been heavy and is slow leaving this year.
The steady patter still pounds in my ears and in my head—water
saturates treeless mountainsides and mud slides down onto
highways covering public buses laden with people, pigs and
chickens and market goods in woven baskets. Radios report
a high death toll and I feel my body clench imagining tomorrow’s
commute with our children to the City along edges of
the disappearing highway: Perhaps all will go well if I blast
the music and we sing together as we pass the precipice?!
Shall I try? . . .
green parakeets
chattering overhead. . .
soft sunbeams
was that river
by Susan Diridoni, San Francisco, California
the air that grew poisonous, contaminated, dropping like
lead, was NOT that river, was that tsunami, even when the fl ames
lit up the oily sea, was that deadly meters-high fl ow/plow tossing
the huge fi shing ships like bathtub ducks, was that river of
everyday comforts, dolls, futons, baseball bats, sewing kits,
bonsai trees tended over three generations, mashing into blackened
sludge, raku-black beetle-black, was that river ripping child with
mother tossed past cemeteries & natural life spans, childhood sweetheart,
was that river his weeping outside on the pavement, inside the ripped
away bodies of love’s making, cold, still wearing a face, was that river,
of our joy, skin no more kissed, that river was
thunderless
heavenly river
remote haven
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frogpond 34:3 59