Haiku (frustration)

a string of warm days

these bare branches do prevail

midst winter's cruel hold


© Strauss 23rd July 2011

Haiku - Moreton Bay Fig (Scent)

four decades fulfilled
beside the Moreton Bay Fig
I am but a child

© Strauss 23rd July 2011

The Demolition

An angry arm rises skyward; slamming down with cold intention; wood and metal are no match for this iron fist.

The heart has been ripped from this house; the soul, having already escaped, bears witness, quivering at the proceeding destruction, like a feeble animal in the shadow of a looming aggressor.


What remains are strewn across a razed field; spilling onto a grotty sidewalk beyond the chain-linked perimetre. A rusty letterbox stands erect like a tombstone out front - a somber guard inscribed with the number 9, who has turned a blind eye.
© Strauss 2011

Tulle cloaked bride

A gauzy veil silhouettes a softened landscape,

Leaving a world of vague shapes

To linger like enigmatic shadows.

Conifers spire toward the heavens;

Leafy renaissance towers

Shrouded in a lost world above.

Tiny birds bolt from a nearby cedar;

Feathered darts

Shooting through a tranquil haze.

I breathe this dawn enchantress

Before she vanishes with the heat of the day;

Knowing not when she might return,

To slink across my lawn with dewy steps,

Lick my eaves,

And caress the naked branches

With a thousand gentle tears.

Tomorrow,

The rains will lavish

These whisper-soothed lands

Like an insistent groom

Pursuing his tulle cloaked bride.

She will succumb.

© Strauss

 

Bruised

Sunlight strains through a dust stained window,

Speckled in last spring’s dried raindrops.

Bruised shadows fan the entirety of a compromised chamber;

Not radiant, not luminous, not exactly dull, but – gentle and subdued.

They flicker as the sunlight plays with the stirring foliage outside

Like shadow puppets behind a calico screen.

I could cleanse the tainted glass;

Lift the burden from its smattered lens;

The light would then flood blindingly, naturally, dazzlingly,

But I have become accustomed to the bruised shadows,
And they trouble you not.

Those gentle bruised shadows, they dance for me.

© Strauss

2006

Image by David Evans