—

Disappointed Hummingbird:

 quasi-haiku and other short form poems

 of Benjamin Suzuki

compiled by Kendal Q. Binmore

part 3

—

Suzuki poems

—

words freed

imprison elsewhere

—

falling leaf

hiding as butterfly

—

stilled shadows

cascade rock:

silent stream

—

tree

twists time

looking back

—

cloud

processional

of possibility

—

rock flow of faces

cascading down:

surged past

—

distant cliff

figured standing

on the falling lost

—

delicate presence

sounding great power:

hummingbird hovers

—

abundance of image:

mind released

from battle

—

bloated young sahuaro

falls in success

—

I walk in this desert canyon

until only audience remains

—

monasteried rock

rained statuette

sterile to our purpose

—

in twilight

blossoms

light the sky

—

faces

carved by feet

climbed success

—

conclaves of figured hope

passed on the path

rocks at my feet

—

in this dry wash

I  flow

on encumbrance of legs

—

cascading water

makes upright man

—

cactus spine

silvered in sun

declarative existence

—

sahuaro blossoms

foreign

to itself

—

wren

glides along my path

points of evolution disparate

—

image

absent origin:

possibility

—

in my hands

a universe endures

chawan

—

thrusting out of ground

past  incomplete:

quartz quarry

 —

delicate life

awaits to destroy

—

I take your cry into myself

as foreign to you

as you are to me

—

envelope of greeting

protective bubble

against fear

—

tangential life

propelled to an elsewhere

by my presence

—

in this seat

I speak of God

to vanquish my living

—

throw outsider

on the laughter

keeping toasty warm

—

face passed to face

image knows no victory

mountain stands

—

ground cobbled of worlds

through travel

mountain path

—

dislocated on the cortex

metaphor

takes no stand

—

shattered quartz

destruction’s crystalized past

—

limbs

struggling toward apart

making tree

—

rock wedged

in rock

image made

—

rock

vigiled as squirrel

vanishes as I approach

—

cactus limbs

bow pardon

at their presence

—

dense humanity

dense rock

—

Man

made of disparate elements

on the ground

—

valley

stilled between

escaping mountains

living in between

—

delicate thunder:

hummingbird hovers

—

faces failing

purpose gone

become mountain again

—

sheared

mountain top falls

supporting image on its side

—

rock

 carved in our glance

cries our presence

—

eroding personage

decaying for the life of others

in the life of others

unaware

—

desert path

gone into silence

when we look up

—

Mitland/Suzuki poems

—

on cliff shear

ridged faces

war our present

—

sentineled stone

of neighborless history

—

surging mountain:

frozen escape

—

defeated outcropping

of rock

becomes

visage for others

—

audienced cliff

awaits

—

turquoise

too dense of script

awaits our shatter

—

grinned rock

unearthed by stepping feet

prepares to live

again

—

struggled rock

pulling itself from creation

canyoned path

—

figures stand

in sheared rock

frozen wind

—

fossilized possibility:

bird men in rocks

unending

—

jagged beauty

waiting to impale:

canyon floor

—

ancient rock slide

makes a man

action at a distance

—

From decaying granite

figures stand

watching history pass

—

outcrop decays

into people

attached to creation

—

Mesa Verde

of some other world

pitted cliff

 (Mesa Verde, late Anasazi cliff dwellings, c. 1190 ce,

apparently located for defense against others as

part of the general Anasazi collapse [KQB])

—

figures in rock

fossils

of what could have been

—

pebbles on the path:

frozen history

supporting our stride in now

—

pebbled histories

rolling under our feet

in hope we fall

—

black fingers of rock

surging to war

forgotten