The man with Red Cross on his shirt said he would come back tomorrow.

Night time is hard to wait. Other children cry, many do not sleep, this boy is one of them. He watches the stars and remembers the legends told at dusk before the black-of-night surrounded his people. The stars, so many only the shaman can count them, are souls of elders, dead for generations. They shine every night to protect us from darkness raptures.

There are so many more stars now since man-kill-man has begun. Men kill animals to eat. Dead men rot, food for other animals. Death brings stars. Will this boy too one day become a star?

         on this dusty earth
         I am alone, not one-with-sky
         together with brothers

Tomorrow, he said tomorrow. That day has come again.

This boy does not see Red Cross on a white shirt; he drags his feet to go to the fields. The children must do work-dead-cannot-do, the school hut is overgrown in vines now. Dead cannot take them along road-of-jeeps, the twisting paths through the forest takes too many hours. Children know forest dangers, jeeps-of-men are more fierce than lions.

At the school hut, Red Cross man spoke of books, word places where stories are kept secret, kept from rain, kept from shaman’s death and forgotten if he didn’t have enough time to share all his stories. Books, Red Cross man told the children. In cities there are houses filled with books. On tables that line each wall, higher than windows or doors. In the cities, he told the children, houses have more than one room.

         at night when stars shine
         do books in crowded rooms tell stories
         like children do

The Red Cross man said he would come back. Tomorrow. To take this boy to the city. Said this boy has become an orphan now. This boy knows the word orphan. Such words, like love and hate, exist in all languages.

Can you take my brothers and sisters too? We are all orphans…

The Red Cross man makes one last promise.

         tomorrow comes and goes
         children grow old, like seasons
         where rain forgets dirt



tomorrow, he said to me
[2011.29.4…a]
A Haibun.
Katya's Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 30—books or beyond them, or Buzz Lightyear (“To infinity, and beyond!”)


 

lightning hides
dew-drop kaleidoscopes
storm gatherings

cloud blue smiles
first splashes dry up

sunset tarries


when an emergency storm warning is total bluff…
[2011.27.4...b]
Katya’s Dew Drop Inn prompts
April 29—haiku, or very short poem

 

I don’t know what the timetables would say, with twenty -first century technology,
about a train from Paris to Berlin; how long I would suffer should I ever return to
your city, the place of your ghost

since nineteen eighty-three, I have abandoned the joys I discovered there; I have
not seen the reunited halves blossom in unity, because, in care of your indifference,
I left so much of my soul, to be lost and erring…

that year in July, the first trial in my ordeal of permanent separation lasted fifteen
hours, with a stop midway in Köln, where for an hour I cried on the phone to a
dear friend who thought my move had been permanent, that I would not be
returning to this secondary place that has now somehow befriended me


you never knew — because you chose to ignore our love — that I cried that day,
for fifteen hours, and fifteen hours every day since we parted



fifteen hours
[2011.27.4…c]
Katya's Dew Drop Inn prompts
April 28—train ride


 

be this, dear april, the cruelest month? i know not!
chocolate eggs for one and bells' distant tolling

let us speak of may, surely cruelty can be found
in birthday parties never celebrated on the twenty-third

sweet june, month of cruel sunlight
i sweat in your heat, my odor is no perfume

sweltering july, yes the cruelest of months
a trip to the beach, i'm a lobster broiled alive

come too quickly, cruelty of august, i beg thee go away
spin your thundering hate, but let me sleep

cool in september grass, oh cruel deception
spider webs, swollen ticks and mosquitoes still win

october, you say, might be as cruel, i solemnly agree
tis the month of death, all souls’ day, halloween

come quickly, cruel november, show me not your praise
a single's bar thanksgiving is not a dream-come-true

begone snow-filled december, cruelty its blustery gift
faraway family, saint nick never falls down my chimney

then january arrives, cruel resolutions to hound me anew
remind me of excess weight, bad breath, how to leave the jobless

ah the ruddy valentine of february, oh cruelest lover of all
my heart split in two, the halves never to encounter

return fowl and cruel march, i curse you from the fire
with cold winds bringing rain, broken umbrellas always leak

one cruelest month? but twelve! for one displeased by life
is it so strange that i never cease to complain?


cruelest month
[2011.25.4...b]
Katya's "Dew Drop Inn" prompts
April 25—cruelest month