Friday Poem: "Reading Sartre's 'Baudelaire' (and other Haiku excuses)"

Reading Sartre's "Baudelaire"
   (and other Haiku excuses)

                   I
Hidden sun today
August expectations fade
I too invisible

                   II
Windowsill of day
Slowly onward a beetle
I watch it glide

                  III
Falling the ant rises
And falling rises climbs again
Say we two are free

                   IV
Where there was nothing
Dams tall cities voyages
Where there is nothing

                    V
Charity of spring
A democracy of flowers
Paint for all I know

                    VI
In every weather
Love worn like a shoe
How thin the soul

                    VII
Smell of cut grass
Through tightly drawn blinds
Rescues me from sleep

8/18-9/6/96, 1/31/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.