Tuesday, June 19, 2012

bad tuesday haiku, for the coming solstice


I.

the steady, rising
heat matches my steadily
rising ire; a cloud

of dust rises from
the patio, today's soft
breeze eliciting

more than the breezy
drafts on the table before
me manage to do.

are we doing the
right thing, attempting to teach
when summer beckons,

when every day is
better than any day last
winter?  when each of

us, so easily
distracted by the slightest
breeze, the merest hint


of motions not our
own, when even the sharpest
students dull, stricken

by june?  i study
a single sunflower camped
beneath a feeder,

the birds having kicked
its beginnings to the ground
weeks and weeks ago.

i should have chopped it
down last month, discarded its
unopened head and

long stem, mowed the spot
it's claimed and been done with it.
today, though, it nods

like a poem, less
useful than pretty, and the
heat seems to make it

yellower.  once in
a while, an essay startles
me with its perfect

prose lacking focus,
like a flower growing in
a surprising place.

today the sun and
heat intensify all of
it:  the sunflower,

the prose, the useless
endeavor before me on
the table, the hope

that rides along when
i grab the stack of essays
in spite of myself.

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