Eighteen years ago this week I started my first major poetry project: Leviathan (about the Mercer Slough). Since then I’ve done two others (Clam Dreamtime City, about Seward Park; and Pentecost, about Discovery Park). A new one is 75% of the way through the first half (they’re two-year projects).
So, here are excerpts from haikus written in the third week of June.
Happy Summer!

Above the green grass
rises a glade of green trees
beneath a dark sky.

Arachnids move their
limbs too fast to see them well
loosened by the heat.

Dogs bark people walk
eagles attract attention
to poplar treetops.

One reckons here not
just with seasons but with one’s
personal context.

A 358
spills passengers out into
a westlake raincloud.

Canadian geese
totaling 76
graze a lakeside lawn

east up the shoreline
away from crows ducks and one
wading blue heron.

Bus shelter dimness
gently softens old faces
inside light more harsh.

The foot on the gas
suffers toes poked by sharp grains
buried in the socks

grasses gone to seed
a hillside’s bad company
hard for ferns to breathe.

Byproducts of this
rounded watery planet
all these winged insects.

One sees the heatwave
(green leaves already fallen)
and the damage done.

Mounds of blackberries
reach for each other across
pedestrian trails.