What Do People Today Know How Much We Owed To Those Benches Round the Town—

 

Passing through Akron’s old parts

I saw a park with benches still—,

scattered around on the grass—,

like little birds—,

 

Who landed there

‘once upon a time’,

yet forgot to fly—,

so silent now—,

 

Ghostly empty—,

yet reminding me

of those we sat on

in my native town—,

 

With them having our back

by holding it upright—,

to keep gazing straight—,

sifting through thoughts—,

 

Sieving for those sparks

that lit up smiles—,

passing them—,

like rosaries—,

 

Full of lucent beads—,

and somehow sensing

that each carrying forth—,

a new tiny fresh-born god—!

Seeing the Big Dipper’s Bowl Moving across the Ohio Sky, I Cannot but Quietly Wonder—

 

Looking at the Big Dipper

in the April Ohio sky—,

as it’s raising up its handle

 

and lowering the bowl—,

made of Merak, Megrez,

Phecda, and Dubhe—,

I wonder which souls

 

among us—it wants

to scoop and lift—,

and who on earth pines

so much for a company

of Gods in order to take

 

on duties that are bigger than

cooking a dinner or running

people-grinding wars—,

and hoping to be lucky

if the Big Dipper

isn’t moving

 

to graze this plane

just off some pricks

who always think

that they are these Gods—

central bellybuttons

 

on which they cannot

help but gaze—,

and thus hardly

doing anything else

about the State of the Universe—

Great Union—,

 

Click clack

I hear the Big Dipper

over the roof of a

tithes-filled church—!

What Did Those Women Do With the Worldly Rush of Time?

 

Women on those old

Japanese prints float

and bend like willows—,

and, thus, they strike—,

 

And no Western woman

could match this art

of such female samurai—

as if they had known

 

how to tame and slow

and store all time

into a haiku three-

line staying breath—,

 

That makes even

a man’s raging wrath

fall and gently land

as her cherry petal—,

 

Willow rustling softly

as they walk—they are—,

laying so low

the hardest wills—!