Highway Haiku
Travel poems...
Dear Reader,
I have a habit of composing haiku in my head while I drive, letting my observations accumulate like mile markers to pass the time.
The haiku form in English is less about syllable counting than it is about noticing. The American landscape is vast and patient; it moves under us as we hurry through it. Driving becomes a kind of meditation, a slow reckoning with impermanence, mortality, and small, often overlooked details.
With the holidays approaching, I’ll be doing even more driving, weaving through towns and cities, highways and back roads. Highway Haiku is a reflection of that rhythm: a way of naming what passes, both the external landscape and the interior one, all of it surprising, unexpected, and full of twists and turns.
As you read, I invite you to imagine the hum of tires, the shifting light, and the strange poetry of motion. Maybe you’ll see your own reflections in the blur of passing fields, or hear in these lines something of the mystery of movement—all of us moving swiftly round the sun.
Enjoy!
HIGHWAY HAIKU
Winter’s done its worst
rows of brown bark, twist and bent:
summer’s barren bones.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
Rows of red eyes
yellow tails like glow bugs
inching their way home.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
Hunting plates
like Ahab at the prow:
"Look, Hawaii!"
𑁍𑁍𑁍
Driving due north
the sun to my left, birds fly
south—shadows to the east.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
What was once a deer
prostrate, as if in prayer.
This too is death.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
Gravel crunches
asphalt whispers
dirt says nothing—all of it true