A sequence of short poems (haiku) about growing old.

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
— Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight”


fresh paint
on the park bench
weathered faces


Chinese New Year
she remembers
the character for home


plum blossoms
on her frail shoulders
a thin shawl


a silent nightingale in her throat cancer


her hair pin
marking the page
on chemotherapy


my aging father
building a birdhouse . . .
his sandpaper voice


golden wrinkles
in an evening sky
mother’s smile


second childhood
the setting sun
on a ferris wheel


drought
an old barn
peeling sunlight


a torn dress
covers old bones
she talks to the kitchen wall


the sea roars
in an empty shell
dementia


gnarled fingers
fumble, the candle, by the window
glazed with ice


the last leaf
from a thin branch
spirals toward a frozen pond


dementia
a candle stump sputters
in the pumpkin’s empty grin


gravel
at the end of the road
father’s voice


a bridge
spanning a frozen river
I sign the DNR


water
on stone
we slip off her wedding ring


at sea
the wind takes possession
of his ashes


the river moves
light from dead stars
past the burning ghats


night falls
through distant stars
into her epitaph


cemetery footpath
the colors of autumn
trod black


spaces
where old pictures hung
water in a net


waves break
over the pier
mother’s diary


dad’s old trunk
an empty envelope
with a foreign stamp


folded away
behind the empty candy jar
mother’s apron


waves rise
and fall into sand
driftwood white as bone


in this universal tragedy
so many
stars