Sunday, May 27, 2012

Daisy

You want your children
To run to

To hold you

Blinking cursor

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Conspiracy of Geeks

They rule the world.
Why else do machines
Not fix themselves?

(Computers etc)

Secret lairs:

  • Mom's basement
  • Grandma's basement
  • Aunt's basement
  • Garden level at Cascading Palms w/ 3 others
  • Bedroom
  • Neo-Georgian
  • Colonial
  • Post-Colonial
  • Duplex
  • Hotel room
  • Beach
  • Castle
They rule the world
And make it impossible
And make it possible
And imparsible

It may be pursuable

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Observations at a fair

I prefer to believe that the black
Eye of the only boy in the Irish
Dance troupe was received while
Kicking ass for Irish folk dance

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Suburban back yard

I don't know you anymore
He shouted
His glasses likely flew off his
Face

It was one of those plaintive cries
That only men, only, choke out
With the dissolution of their
Desolation

There was a reply
It was low bass

The wind struck then
Rattling the apricot
Leaves

Nothing more could be
Heard

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Payson Canyon Spring


Payson Canyon Spring
Originally uploaded by Clint Gardner

No HftNM yet one this venture, but this might just be one of best pictures I've ever captured. It is, none-the-less, probably my favorite photo so far.

Haibun to follow--perhaps shortly, or perhaps longly.

I am on vacation, after all.

Stop peer pressuring me!

Monday, May 14, 2012

Kid's show star

The former kid's show star sits at his computer
There, that blog post again, it itches his skin
The one that some no one someone posted
But like untreated syphilis it haunts his cowboy
Soul

There, there is his past; the stupid he can't live
Down or up, the empty heart that was tied to
Place and time and time and place and dark
Matter

The kids loved to hate him, and he tell himself
That before he leaves seventeen comments
Because eighteen would be too many to
Condone

And then he searches again and again and again
Looking for those mentions of himself and him
Self. Because that is what cowboys do who have
Lives after being a kid's show star and no some
One

Sunday, May 13, 2012

HfaNM 3: Washington Park




Today I wandered around Washington Park, four miles up Parley's Canyon beyond the golf course club house. 




 It was another extremely temperate temperature, with partly cloudy skies.  The park itself is an oddity, really.  The trees seem to be a mix of native, box elder, scrub oak, and pine; as well as non-native shrubs such as lilac and currant.  


Paper mulberry, however, is native.  I know this without recourse to the Internet, since on the farm where I grew up we had a paper mulberry bush near our duck pond.  It was shaded by a standard mulberry and some wild rose bushes.  Now, you must realize that our farm was in the heart of the Salt Lake Valley and the paper mulberry is not native there.  That particular paper mulberry was transplanted by my grandfather from an uncertain canyon surrounding the Salt Lake Valley.  My father was very specific in his recollection of how the bush came to be when it would bloom each spring.  Seeing the familiar flower in the Wasatch caused me to think of my family's connection to place. We've been here for over 160 years now.  That would be eight generations?  We're just at 7, as far as I can tell.


I wandered about the place for a while.  It is an odd place, really.  The native trees hovered over non-native grass and swing sets, hibachi's and picnic tables.  Still, the butterflies didn't seem to mind.  They flitted about and left me unable to take a proper picture until one decided to land on a winter-felled box elder branch.  I could see the golf course through the trees.  I don't think the butterfly, or moth (as it may be) could, however.  I think their optical ability is somewhat limited for that, but I'm sure the ultraviolet view they enjoy is non-the-less spectacular.  


I wandered east in the park to where it met up with the Mountain Dell Golf course that borders it to the north and headed back to the wild-looking area that surrounds the conveniently located rest rooms at the gate of the park.  Westward from there I came across a sudden creek.  Buttercups hugged the margin.  The I-80 noise was louder here than any other part of the park.  Cars and motorcycles screamed up the Parley's canyon grade, and the occasion basso profundo Wotan yell of a diesel's engine brake cut the stream gurgle.  The highway noise fit Washington Park well, I think.  As I said, it is an odd park.  The Natural is side by side with the unnatural--the Man imposed.  

The stream that I found was near, as fall as I can tell, an old house.  I didn't see any foundations or remnants of that house, other than several lilac bushes:
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
  
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,         
And thought of him I love.  (Whitman)
Lilacs were a favorite flower of pioneers and was my mother's favorite flower.  I thought of her on seeing them with their heart-shaped leaves.   The trinity that Whitman mentions is the trinity of Mother/Father/Child.  Love.

There was some other signs of us at the site:  beer cans and butter cups, but one strange placement puts it all together:


That is a decrepit sweat shirt and a hawk feather.  I have no idea the story behind the sweatshirt and several horror story plot lines flitted across my mind when I studied the scene, but I think it is the feather that is more baffling.  Did a hawk land here and in some struggle with its prey lose a feather, or, more likely, was it preening the nearby tree and pluck out this feather like we pluck out irritating nose hair?  

Nature.  Unnatural.  UnNature.

Is that even possible?


A small creek appears
Completely unexpected
Cars scream on the highway


Friday, May 11, 2012

Haibun for a New Millenium: Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve

The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve is owned by the Nature Conservancy.  I was intrigued to visit, since I've never heard of it before I randomly found it by Googling "cool natural places to visit in Utah."  There is one error in my Boo, below:  Nature Conservancy's main focus is on buying private lands that are under threat of development and preserves them in perpetuity.  They sometimes turn over those lands to local governments.  Given the political climate in Utah to SELL ALL THE LANDS! and DEVELOP ALL THE THINGS!, it seems important for organizations like the Nature Conservancy to be leery of local government hand-overs.

It was quite a beautiful morning.  The redwing blackbirds were out in force; their trumpeting, however, couldn't overwhelm thrush that were singing madly in the bullrushes whilst making their nests with catkin fluff.


























A thrush makes her nest
Singing with beak full of fluff
We sleep well at night

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Haibun for a New Millenium: Yellow Fork Canyon

Note: While I was at the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve today (May 11, 2012) the idea for posts like this one coalesced, and that is why I have edited it and changed its title. The concept is to create a haibun using the variety of technology I have access to.

Yellow Creek Canyon sits at the bottom of the Salt Lake Valley in the Oquirrah Mountain Range.
 


listen to ‘Yellow Fork ominous’ on Audioboo






Yellow Fork Panorma 2


I want to turn back
But the path draws me upward
Deer crash in the woods

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

She being brand/-new (well new to me)

So the great carless experiment of the naughts has come to a conclusion.  I join you all in the car(rat) race again.  Where did that "To all the Cars I've Owned Before" web page go?


Friday, May 04, 2012

At the defense


My friend of all these years talks through history
Of thought he once found suspect and nonsense
But he has found the root of the conflict and how
The tree was pruned; how the prevailing winds have
Leaned the tree  hard against injustice of life

It is the lonely leaf (not alone) that feels the
Whip of a hot summer breeze or the punch of hail
Those  on the windward side shrivel and tear
Those leeward grow wide with thick veins

The tree knows to sway and twist in balance
Through its studied response to the weather's
Argument

Without the tree, no leaf.  Without the leaf, no tree

Meanwhile, outside, a gentle spring rain falls on
The lush forest of the university, dripping life
On sparkling sidewalks slick with the future