A friend-inspired this Haiku by writing his own.

Tonight I fear yet
Thrill all the more as thunder
And lightning meet earth

Summer soon: The Esplanade on May 26

I lay contented as
The breeze flits through the trees,
The muggy air,
My pulled back hair.

In the afternoon shade, my skin is dry
Though the hazy sun still winks her eye.

A bird hops by.

Even the people stuck in traffic seem happy, lazy.

A little boy plucks up a daisy
Then looks at the train headed to MGH-- chucka chucka chucka chuck.
He gives the daisy to a duck.

Peace floats through Boston on the wings of weather.
In the quiet atmosphere above,
It gathers happiness
And sprinkles it down the Charles in golden flecks
That rest on the crests of the water.

And the ducks are baptized.

And all barren winter land becomes holy once again.
And the spirit of happiness becomes mighty,
Even in watching a sparrow rinse himself off in the dust.

While the haze of the day begins to fade,
The ants are finishing up work and weeding their way home
Through my blanket.
The green oak leaves turn over to sleep
As the golden eye drops behind the sky.

Then the wind whispers, hush...
And twilight approaches.

Hands

My hands have become a New Englander's.
They match my soul, my birthplace, my feet.
Cracked, hardened, and dry.
My hands are only 22 years old, but they are working hard:
One fissure on my index knuckle from a jacket which I
Zip up, zip down, zip up.
My hands look like they were wet and I dipped them in flour
Yet are brown from the sun, even in winter.

My hands hurt all the time:
To make a fist, to wash, to moisturize.
They are prideful and hardening
Like the oak tree's root under the snow.
They stand for my recent past.
My lack of sleep, my sore back, my saved money.

My hands are not as beautiful as the old woman's hands
That give me change for her coffee every morning:
Her hands feel like hard plastic
Swollen with blood,
Like 70 years in New England.
Her hands are my weeping willow, which,
Knotted and sagging,
Still grandly lives.

I want to tell you what I'm like, really,
Through my poetry.
How cooking dinner makes me rhyme
And drinking wine makes me sad
How my reflection rarely drives me to write
But the feeling of my own soft skin
Makes me realize how soothing it is: a pen rolling on paper
How, if I come back to this poem, I'll hate it.
How sometimes I say things cryptically
Because it makes me more interesting to myself

I want to tell you how self-injurous my behavior is--
How inward I am,
And how I talk as not to hear myself.

Here is something about crying:
Silent, deep sorrowful cries are the best
Because you feel them in your heart to start
Because the tears spill over, hot, soothing
When they touch your yearning face.

I don't have time to explain it all, though.

Some girl in the autumn.

Today I step off the bus
And see:
A pretty girl with
Long hair blowing, flowing
Behind her briskly-walking
Thin, jaunty body.
Girl I don’t know hurts me,
Only in her beauty.
Her carefree attitude a color in the atmosphere,
A painting this September morning:
A girl with dark blue jeans, light orange jacket,
And clear, white skin in a town’s crowd—
Still, my eye is drawn to her.

And, for a moment,
I thought I was her, maybe once, some time ago.

I know, though,
I never was a pretty girl with long, straight hair,
Strikingly clothed and a contented look,
With a face another stared at
For its grace and pleasantness,
Walking briskly in the late summer.

And I can’t decide if that hurts,
Or if I like it.

A double haiku that has to do with nature. Or rather, the unfortunate nature of a situation.

Cat, now we both have
Diabetes. Maybe we
Can help each other.

I'll draw up your shots.
But your missing fifth digit
Means you can't draw mine.

A February birthday poem, written in September.

This is a birthday poem
Because you loved to read my poems
And you liked it when I wrote about you

I'll put this on your grave
But your soul's not there
And I don't know how to find it
Still, I hope you will read this

You still have a poem of mine
But I don't know how to get it back

Happy birthday
You bought me a painted sterling bracelet
with arched jumping dolphins for mine
at that festival
next to your house
remember?

I liked how those dolphins jumped in a
continuous circle one after another
Brightly
I liked how it fit my wrist

That was September 10 years ago
And I lost that bracelet
It's gone Intangible

I can't walk through the festival
I see its lights dangling between
telephone poles and I cry
Dolphins dripping down my eyes
And the twilight colors them painted sterling

In my poem to you
I won't talk about how beautiful you are
Because you don't exist
Because you weren't when I saw you
your chest stuffed and your face made up
and they couldn't get your skin color right
so you looked yellow
You looked dead
I was scared to look for too long because I thought your eyes would pop open

I can't see anything but those pretty dolphins
They're unraveling becoming a string
now separating too

I don't want to let them go
They're just a memory
They don't look like a bracelet anymore
I forgot what colors they were painted
I forgot the little things I liked about them
I forgot what the clasp looked like
They fall sadly into separates
Dripping they look like hot tears
I wish they would turn into birds and fly
You died without being ready
So they never will