Jerome Berglund


Lucky Horseshoe


      country swan floats serene
center of own broad pond
      dainty, quite queenly
 
 
      overgrown keep
of bristling nettles
       princess do you hide?
 
 
     flowers look fine
before the sunrise
     glistening in starlight
 
 
      commoner
wears a French braid
      crowned in red poppies
 
 
      bird travels long way
accumulates many names
      …interchangeable
      
      
      
                  Stars


      in the distance
beyond dingy tenements clothes lines
      it towers, glimmering
 
 
      rickety old chicken truck
rows rusted cages
      wobbling over rough terrain
 
 
      high altitudes
eccentric way of drowning, face down
      in sea of clouds
 
 
      the corgis
trot around her feet
      dimly panting
 
 
      once you learn to spot eye-lights
never suspend 
      disbelief again


 
      Horseshoes


painter lost deep in wilderness,
frantically seeks becoming canvas
 
 
      high stakes gambling
when there’s a key in the pot –
      the clouds part
 
 
      honeymoon period –  
spic and span
      we clean all the surfaces
 
 
      their faces distort
through heat of the dancing flames
      lends each rosy hue
 
 
      wait long enough
every photo
      becomes a sad one

Jerome Berglund has many haiku, senryu and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bear Creek Haiku, Bamboo Hut, Bottle Rockets, Cold Moon Journal, Daily Haiga, Failed Haiku, Frogpond, Haiku Dialogue, Haiku Seed, Japan Society, Otoliths, Poetry Pea, Scarlet Dragonfly, Synchronized Chaos, Triya, Under the Basho, Wales Haiku Journal, and the Zen Space.

 
 

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