31. shattered haiku

{from midJune / Saturday} The future has become a fearful thing: a threeheaded beast guarding the gates of fate. A forced metaphor I suppose. But how else to explain the shift from certainty to the unknown? 

•••

(4)            single egret   

(2)            our son

(7)/(3)      For a moment the world cen/ters down to

(4)/(4)      preening motions / sense of falling

(4)/(4)      unfolding fan / an open hand

(4)/(3)      village walkway / midday, no

(4)/(5)      late afternoon / Saturday becomes

(3)/(6)      still waters / an exchange of riddles

•••

{Sunday} —and as a result, I am left with the failure to construct a plausible haiku this week. Only a scattering of phrases, fractured lines without full cohesion or pattern. 

•••

On a sudden whim, stripped old newspapers into halves and quarters, then cut the final segments into eights. All for a classroom project I developed last year, but never took the time to follow through with it, or even plotout an approach for that matter. An hour or more of ripping and cutting left my fingers a heavy grey, blurred with ash; a year's noise of headlines and photographs fractionalized to preliminary papier-mâché: Trumpisms, murder hornets, pandemic worries, BLM, economic failures, lockdowns, riot, social distancing, global climate, quarantines, shortages, police brutalities, racism, teargas, anarchy— the world's miseries presented to become mush in a matter of days.