Micro Manifesto
(after Wendell Berry)
Love the looks and likes
from strangers.
So, friends, do not trust anyone
who calls you friend.
Ask yourself what is the point?
When you have no answer
you are done.
Put your faith in talking dogs.
Go where you’ve always gone,
but backwards.
Practice invisibility.
Siren songs
After a heavy rain, the sun burns through,
prompting, once again, sirens
from police, fire and rescue,
each with its own tone and pattern.
By ear, I follow them, heading west,
chasing the setting sun,
until fading, far away
and a new batch can be heard,
coming, I imagine, from the town
just to the east, quickly passing through.
So long
It was already time to go
the trees and the less than trees
we all know
have lost their leaves
when you arrive
and anything else that was once there
you didn’t seem to care
the skinny wrists of our old grandmother
and couldn't notice
the scaly backs of hands
that we’re still waiting for you
the forever brittle fingers
with the long unpainted nails
somehow still lost without you
hard to imagine
and now that we’re here
and now that you’re there
all this starts again anew
we all and all of the all again
and not so soon but yet
all of this and all of us
looking backward
looking forward
to what we’ve been waiting
and what we’ve been saying
so long.
Modern times
Men and women
in their fentanyl folds
like yogis in their forward bends
or actors in a zombie flick.
But no one’s switching
to the next pose.
No one’s yelling,
“Cut! Scene!”
Gleanings
This is neither a haiku,
counting syllables on your fingers.
Nor a tanka, no more adding
the belated seven and seven.
Not even a haibun with its
perfectly prosaic paragraph.
This is what was left behind
after the masters have
harvested the garden.
Doug Sylver’s writing can be found in Drifting Sands, The Sun Magazine, The New York Times and Fixator Press, among other publications. He is a recently retired public high school teacher and lives with his love, Monica, in Seattle.
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