Cuttings: May

Haiku and Short Poems
Spring Season
1998 - 2025

By Mike Garofalo

 

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Place, Setting, Loacation:

Red Bluff, Tehama County,
North Sacramento Valley,
California, 1998-2016

 

Walls of red
bougainvillea bracts,
lasting and scentless.

 

Dirty hand, callused palm,
black fingernails:
Green Thumb.

 

wide-eyed cows
taken in a trailer—
fruit in a basket

 

The cows have vanished down the road,
    and the last clouds have floated away.
We sit together, the valley and me,
    until only the valley remains.

(Thanks to the Taoist poet Li Po.)

 

cottonwood fluff
stuck to dry weeds—
silent wind chimes

 

Under our floor,
Spider families.
Two Worlds—
an inch apart.

 

The Mind is a vast Bodhi forest,
The body a Bodhi tree.
Dirt is in every cranny,
Flowers blossom, leaves fall.

The Bodhi Trees have been
cut down,
The Bright Mirrors shattered.
Beginning with nothing,
Replant the trees,
remake the mirrors.

Make one's mind like a mirror,
One's body like the Giving tree.
Reflect accurately and impartially.
Give fruit and shade.

 

soothing hum
twirling ceiling fan—
we doze on the cool tile

 

Mother's Day—
an old man
hugs his granddaughter.

 

A killdeer fans its tail and peeps,
luring us away
from the nest she keeps.

 

Lathhouse shade—
the scent of honeysuckle
filling the shadows.

 

Bittersweet vines
bounce in the breeze—
a peacock shrieks.

 

pilgrimage over—
their home
is sacred now

 

dead mouse
in my dog's mouth—
dark clouds

 

The force of Spring—
mysterious,
fecund,
powerful beyond measure.

 

studying a tree—
my dog and I
pause and pee

 

odd frog
crawls out of hole—
CrOaK!

 

Sunday—
quiet hours
no holiness

 

dark and dirty
pond at dawn—
white ducks dip

 

a thorn
almost invisible—
still stinging

 

after watering ....
    the Swiss chard
    drips

 

A flurry of gnats
on sunset breezes—
splattered windshield.

 

Squeezing my hand,
she said goodbye,
one last time.

 

Dusty cream ceiling—
bowlegged black spider
plodding upside-down

 

Rising early,
    Long I Ponder
Decades gone.

 

often
    Wide mind, deep feelings ...
poemless

 

Good weather all the week, but come the weekend the weather stinks. 
Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth; and all Seasons for dying.
Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason enough to plod ahead.
Springtime flows in our veins.
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her slave.
A soul is colored Spring green.
Complexity is closer to the truth.
All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime; dead beings stay quite lie down dead.
Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn into firewood - on the chopping block of time.
Fresh fruit from the tree - sweet summertime!
Gardens are demanding pets.
Shade was the first shelter.
When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.
One spring and one summer to know life's hope; one autumn and one winter to know life's fate.
Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.
Relax and be still around the bees.
Paradise and shade are close relatives on a summer day.
Absolutes squirm beneath realities.
The spiders, grasshoppers, mantis, and moth larva are all back:  the summer crowd has returned!
To garden is to open your heart to the sky.
Dirty fingernails and a calloused palm precede a Green Thumb.
Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.
Seeing with one eye and feeling with the other does help bring things into focus.
Round things are very nice - fruit, women, the earth.
Gardening is a passion to continue, despite failure and uncertainty.
The empty garden is already full.
Gardeners learn to live in worm time, bee time, and seed time.
Pulling Onions, by Michael P. Garofalo

 

Memorial Day—
unpacking
summer clothes.

 

tiny green plums
nestled in the leaves
hiding from the sun

 

The shade moves
ever so slowly—
the heat crawls past noon.

 

her son
hears her last breath—
silence

 

lines of baled hay
yellowing in the sunshine—
dry May day

 

A few molecules awry, madness beckons:
Flooding visions, no mind that reckons.

 

Howling dog
over and again and on an on ...
Shaddup!!!!

 

Close to midnight—
    the train
    rumbles past.

 

Thunder shakes the schoolroom walls,
kids squeal, hail rattles outside the halls.

 

Rich or poor,
wise or foolish—
inevitable midnight.

 

Checking the drip lines
one by one, in the sun ...
my sweat drops ...

 

Purple and pale blue
    vetch blossoms festoon the pond;
        draped by the black sky.

 

 

Questionables:
two points on one needle;
speaking never listening.

 

Taking aim—
the First Precept
falls.

 

The gardens, fences,
pastures, foothills, mountains ...
All
    disappear in the night.

 

the growl of trucks
    edges off
the silence of night

 

Up and down, up and down, up and down;
two hummingbirds fussing round and round.

 

Pine
candles in the wind,
flickering greens.

 

Robust grape vines twine and climb
on the sagging fence
that never whines.

 

Paint splattered art room floor
scuffed and worn from desk to door.

 

The cat paused
on her path of destruction—
licking her paws.

 

shotgun blast—
    his brain
    drips down the wall

 

telling the story,
    the empty house stutters
    over the sad parts

 

Cloudless morning
pale blue sky—
single meadowlark's cry.

 

A curvy county road
turns past three white crosses—
both hands grip the wheel.

 

The ominous soundtrack
fills the room—
penetrating fear.

 

two roses
crawling under the fence,
looking for the sun

 

dead cat
one leg up—
magpies hop closer

 

 

Basho's crow:
sketched with words
perched on a page.

 

Beneath the pond scum
deeper down,
the pebble drops away.

 

Dead Dog, A Concrete Poem by Michael P. Garofalo

 

Thousands of leaves
shake in the breeze—
empty sky.

 

"A ha!" to you
may be "Ho hum" to me;
But, "A ha!" together is
true poetry.

 

Dead at forty five, we buried him;
Alcohol and vicodin, did him in.
Steve G.  1950-1995

 

Remebering Vietnam:
my cousin cried,
thinking of friends killed
by Vietcong.

 

Touch and run ...
Tag, your It!
Playing It is fun.

 

Flesh to flesh
mating—
May-flies

 

Night crew
closing up the restaurant—
tired faces.

 

Memorial Day
nitro boat races on the lake—
4000 horsepower Taps.

 

May the millions and millions and millions
of women, children, elders, and men
homes, farms, orchards, animals ...
who all perished
in the endless ugly wars
All be remembered and cherished.

No thanks to all
the lock-step soldiers, warrior zealots, drugged mercenaries,
heartless politicians, and duped sheep-folks
of Nations, Religions, and War Lords
who raised their bloody flags
who cheered themselves
who called on the blessings of God and Allah and Country
who stole as they pleased
who murdered all in sight
then
bulldozed the dead into ditches, and
day-dreamed of building Memorials for themselves.

Are there heroes in all these tragic tales?
Where there decent, honorable and just men defending ...
Of course!
They are quiet now,
heads bowed,
reflective,
silent,
sad.

Fold up some flag, bury it deep,
Plant a tree over it today:
a living sign,
a growing reminder,
of the beauty
of the productivity
of the happiness
Of Peace!"

 

 

(Starting in the Spring of 1994,
more than 800,000 Tutsi tribespeople
were massacred by Hutu tribespeople
in Rwanda, Africa.)

 

He sliced off
her little hands—
cleaning up Rawanda.

Classrooms filled
with rotting corpses—
Hutu educational reforms.

 

 

Place, Setting, Location:

Vancouver, Clark County,
Columbia River Valley,
Washington, 2017-2025

 

Coming In May 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cuttings Spring:

February

March

April

May

June

 

 

 

Months and Seasons
Quotes, Poems, Saying, Lore, Myths
Holidays, Gardening Chores
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

January

April

July

October

February

May

August

November

March

June

September

December 

 

 

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25 Steps and Beyond: Collected Works

At the Edges of the West, Volume 1
Highway 101 and Hwy 1: Pacific Coast

The Gushen Grove Sonnets

Bundled Up: Tanka Poetry

At the Edges of the West, Volume 2
Highway 99 and Interstate 5

Cuttings: Haiku

Poetry Research by Mike Garofalo

 

 

 

Mike Garofalo lives in Vancouver,
Washington. He worked for 50 years
in city and county public libraries,
and in elementary schools. He
graduated with degrees in
philosophy, library science, and
education. He has been a web
publisher since 1998.

Biography


 

 

25 Steps and Beyond: Collected Works

Text Art and Concrete Poetry

 

 

Cuttings: May, Spring

First Distributed on the Internet WWW in September 1999.
Updated until April of 2017.
Posted new poems from Vancouver in May 2025.

 

This document was last edited, revised,
reformatted, added to, relinked,
changed, improved, or modified
by Mike Garofalo
on April 5, 2025.