A barnacled hull 

I trim my sheets to the squall

Wild gusts of my life!

Let’s go cross country

Until we come to the cliffs

Where the condors soar

 It’s too late to die 

(where is my generation)

Before I get old

 If I had my way

After all is said and done 

I’d leave ‘em laughing

 honorable lives

that they may serve as water

to quench and quicken 

 While innocence hopes

Ambition forgives cruelty

Somewhere there is war

 The man to the boy

What was the best thing today?

Right now is, Father

panoply of clouds

a mystic combination

of water and air

 i offer this thread

a frayed end of silken thoughts

pull and i'm unstitched

 Billboards are blaring

With faces of the lawyers 

Land of grievances

 

When it all had worth

They expected the rag man

His bundles in tow

 The old county road

A dog chased the rusty truck

Both faded with dust

 The First

They followed the tracks

Mammoths on the horizon

To un-peopled lands

 When you have questions 

But don’t need to have answers

Come see about me

 Singin' in the car

Don’t care what time I get there

I love this next song

 A gray brittle twig

Depleted - almost hopeless

Too far from the roots

The message she wrote

Has never faded away

What's done is not done

Without a good-bye

 She got off near Santa Fe

Dissolved into dawn

A faint morning moon

She wrote something on his palm

And pressed it to hers

 When he asked her name

She placed her hand on his lips

Listen for the moon

 The train turned a bend

Her head fell to his shoulder

They dreamed without sleep

 They talked in darkness

Without ending a story

Or starting the next

 As the night rolled on

She said that love and passion 

Do not need to rhyme

 She told of the South

Of hands bleeding from the fields

Of faith and aching

 Her dark eyes spoke out

A daring invitation

You can come closer

 Though they'd never met

Her look said that she knew him

Before we they born

 When he noticed her 

 She was immersed in the land

Her eyes rimmed with tears

This haiku and the twelve that follow comprise an accidental story of sorts.

He lost his ticket

Not sure where the train headed

Just feeling the ride

 Ironically

It's hard to spot a leopard

Or even see one

 My Dad used to say

I feel more like I do now

Than a while ago

 2025

This is how the year begins

With doubt and a sigh