Morning Haiku

SONIA SANCHEZ

Beacon Press, Boston

For Miyoshi Smith

and

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

and

Njeeri Wa Ngugi

Let me wear the day

Well so when it reaches you

You will enjoy it.

Sonia Sanchez

The best thing you can do is to be a woman and
stand before the world and speak your heart.

Abbey Lincoln

contents

preface: haikuography

10 haiku (for Max Roach)

duende

dance haiku

14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)

10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals)

4 haiku (for Nubia)

21 haiku (for Odetta)

3 haiku (for Richard Long, for Tanabata festival, and for Luisa Moreno)

4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)

7 haiku (for Ray Brown)

6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney)

2 haiku (on viewing John Dowell’s Tranescape)

4 haiku (for Max Roach)

sister haiku (for Pat)

15 haiku (for Toni Morrison)

5 haiku (for Brother Damu)

6 haiku (for Elizabeth Catlett in Cuernavaca)

5 haiku

2 haiku (for Ras Baraka)

6 haiku (for Oprah Winfrey)

5 haiku (for Sarah Vaughan)

2 haiku

9 haiku (for Freedom’s Sisters)

5 love haiku

7 haiku (for St. Augustine)

6 haiku (for Maya Angelou)

haiku woman (La mujer de los ojos)

memory haiku

haiku poem: 1 year after 9/11

explanatory notes

preface: haikuography

From the moment i found a flowered book high up on a shelf at the 8th Street Bookshop in New York City, a book that announced Japanese haiku; from the moment i opened that book, and read the first haiku, i slid down onto the floor and cried and was changed. i had found me. It’s something to find yourself in a poem—to discover the beauty that i knew resided somewhere in my twenty-one-year-old bloodstream; from the moment i asked the clerk in the bookstore if i was pronouncing this haiku word correctly, i knew that i had discovered me, had found an awakening, an awareness that i was connected not only to nature, but to the nature of myself and others; from the moment i saw the blood veins behind beautiful eyes, the fluids in teeth, and the enamel in tongues, i knew that haiku were no short-term memory, but a long memory.

Patricia Donegan shares the idea of “haiku mind”—“a simple yet profound way of seeing our everyday world and living our lives with the awareness of the moment expressed in haiku—and to therefore hopefully inspire others to live with more clarity, compassion, and peace.”

i knew when i heard young poets say in verse and conversation: i’m gonna put you on “pause,” i heard their “haiku nature,” their haikuography. They were saying, i gotta make you slow down and check out what’s happening in your life. In the world.

So this haiku slows us down, makes us stay alive and breathe with that one breath that it takes to recite a haiku.

This haiku, this tough form disguised in beauty and insight, is like the blues, for they both offer no solutions, only a pronouncement, a formal declaration—an acceptance of pain, humor, beauty and non-beauty, death and rebirth, surprise and life. Always life. Both always help us to maintain memory and dignity.

What i found in the 8th Street Bookshop was extraordinary and ordinary: Silence. Crystals. Cornbread and greens. Laughter. Brocades. The sea. Beethoven. Coltrane. Spring and winter. Blue rivers. Dreadlocks. Blues. A waterfall. Empty mountains. Bamboo. Bodegas. Ancient generals. Lamps. Fireflies. Sarah Vaughan—her voice exploding in the universe, returning to earth in prayer. Plum blossoms. Silk and steel. Cante jondo. Wine. Hills. Flesh. Perfume. A breath inhaled and held. Silence.

And i found that my mouth and the river are one and the same.

i set sail

in tall grass

no air stirs.

Sonia Sanchez

10 haiku (for Max Roach 1)

1.

Nothing ends

every blade of grass

remembering your sound

2.

your sounds exploding

in the universe return

to earth in prayer

3.

as you drummed

your hands kept

reaching for God

4.

the morning sky

so lovely imitates

your laughter

5.

you came warrior

clear your music

kissing our spines

6.

feet tapping

singing, impeach

our blood

7.

you came drumming

sweet life on

sails of flesh

8.

your fast beat

riding the air settles

in our bones

9.

your drums

soloing our breaths into

the beat . . . unbeat

10.

your hands

shimmering on the

legs of rain.

duende

1.

My hands

abandon me

to bloodletting

2.

my breasts

are dancing in

silver

3.

my feet

are crying

blues

4.

my thighs

sing the flesh

off the guitar

5.

my breath

is indecent as

my teeth

6.

aaaaaahhhhhhh

yeyeyeyeyeye

i am still standing . . .

dance haiku

1.

Do we dance

death in a fast lane

of salsa

2.

or minuet

death with an aristocrat’s

pointed toe

3.

do we ease

into death with

workingclass abandon

4.

or position our

legs in middleclass

laughter

5.

do we swallow

death in a fast gulp

of morning pills

6.

or factor death

into prime years

in our throats?

14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till 2)

1.

Your limbs buried

in northern muscle carry

their own heartbeat

2.

Mississippi . . .

alert with

conjugated pain

3.

young Chicago

stutterer whistling

more than flesh

4.

your pores

wild stars embracing

southern eyes

5.

footprints blooming

in the night remember

your blood

6.

in this southern

classroom summer settles

into winter

7.

i hear your

pulse swallowing

neglected light

8.

your limbs

fly off the ground

little birds . . .

9.

we taste the

blood ritual of

southern hands

10.

blue midnite

breaths sailing on

smiling tongues

11.

say no words

time is collapsing

in the woods

12.

a mother’s eyes

remembering a cradle

pray out loud

13.

walking in Mississippi

i hold the stars

between my teeth

14.

your death

a blues, i could not

drink away.

10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals 3)

1.

Philadelphia roots

lighting these walls

with fireflies

2.

flowers stretched

in prayer on a

cornerstone wall

3.

brownskinned

children dancing

with butterflies

4.

these children’s

faces humiliate

the stars

5.

Philadelphia

painted with

blue hallelujahs

6.

winter

a warrior’s face

i hear our bones singing

7.

in the open

alley a galaxy

of dreams

8.

common ground

is we, forever

breathing this earth

9.

hands

in the green light

saluting peace

10.

even in the

rain, these murals

pause with rainbows.

4 haiku (for Nubia 4)

1.

Telephone wires sang

her voice over

soft sister laughter

2.

you held us

with summer stained

smiles of hope

3.

i hold your

breath today . . . you sail home

across the ocean

4.

i see you Nubia

walking your Mississippi walk

God in your hands.

21 haiku (for Odetta 5)

1.

The sound of

your voice thundering out

of the earth

2.

a drum

beat summoning us

to prayer

3.

behold

the smell of

your breathing

4.

dilated

by politics

you dared to love

5.

you opened

up your throat

to travellers

6.

exhaled

Lead Belly on Saturday

nites and Sunday mornings

7.

your music asked:

has your song a father

or a mother?

8.

on stage

you were a

soldier of hands

9.

accenting

beat after beat

into beauty

10.

you asked: is there

no song that will

bring rain to this desert?

11.

you unveiled

your voice at early

demonstrations

12.

saluted our

blood until we were

no longer strangers

13.

waltzed our

eyes until we danced

from chandeliers

14.

your songs journeyed

in a country padlocked

with greed

15.

a country

still playing on

adolescent knees

16.

suddenly the morning

takes you back    another

time another continent

17.

where stones

contacted stars    told

us hello and goodbye

18.

finally we remember

how you gave life

to memory

19.

remember your eyes

morning stars

perfumed with rain

20.

your mouth

a sweet wind

painted with hieroglyphics

21.

finally to pass

your song into our

ancestral rivers.

3 haiku

1.

(for Richard Long 6)

Elegant ascot

man turning words

into gems.

2.

(for Tanabata festival 7)

star filled poem

shall I hang you

on pine trees?

3.

(for Luisa Moreno 8)

Free brown woman

sailing white river currents

without a mortgaged soul.

4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond 9)

1.

Blue atom

poet transcribing

our flesh

2.

your quicksilver

words waterfalling in

sweet confession

3.

you have taken down

the morning turned it into

a roar of blackness

4.

your poems . . .

butterflies fluttering down

to earth.

7 haiku (for Ray Brown 10)

1.

African bass

translating our

beauty

2.

hammering

nails into the

off . . . beat . . .

3.

walking

our eyes on

water

4.

hands

violining us into

blue black waves

5.

ding ding ding (click)

dong dong dong dong dong (click)

dee boom (click) deeeboooom (click)

deeeee booooom (click)

6.

bass

transcending

old memory

7.

your sound

sweet perfume

on my thighs.

6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney 11)

1.

(“L’oiseau Charlie Parker”)

I

An avalanche

of reds and pinks exploding

into jazz

II

this yardbird

wears ostrich feathers

no boundaries.

2.

(Untitled Watercolor)

Ragman

in Paris wearing

Harlem eyes.

3.

(Untitled)

How to dance

in blood and

remain sane?

4.

(“Lithograph Afrique”)

Pink and green and

grey figures leap off the ship

bones line the clouds.

5.

(“Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald”)

Nose. mouth. eyes.

green. orange.

yellow voice spinning . . .

6.

(“Self-portrait”)

I

One eye larger

than the other swimming

in the Seine

II

green-brown face

African neck brace, European

collar on pink body.

ly”J7œºŽÿê¨P&��áî[6(nhÅéæbÅSÞ«Ã-I�M#*ÃLBƒÏDª˜%¾@7œûžF§…šn.…Ë1×V�ÿ„ZÃ ;¦ ÜIEU�´ƒ32ØK4©J’›Ïò? Œ½ôB>¬ \™„n’–¦AåfªåPp Ó÷ôB ¹Æ›ûiËe#V‰ÓW>zPFhÍ¹E9ò�þŸKJõ†göšˆß#ñz‚û…�T”ê® f¦…ø�WNØæ˜¬˜³Ükß(äxm=1…¢:JàÏÜU~°¼IÁ%è:te�’Ôu#@«~{P�ÔÎùèýÑL~�ƒÄñÃ#ÀCE¦Pº=kUµe_x¡§Ñ™ ñE¼Žê·¼B÷´v´‹‘�x¶æO”Û-�êP÷WVñÍëOîb¤”¼P7C Ëe~{Ë™Ý‘3_s©Ò ×sÊÁX,ÁûüxÐ¢w£3°§8ÿóO túq›Žj÷X¥®&4…¶Õ¯-ûÀù, {r¤¡íš!eoqjîº@^’zã˜a¼á€?¿Èqv¹[`&@a°C6›j�E/¿“öÙT ‘ñíÂŒÃ©ÒÔ[˜×ª�DkPv¯?Ô"cb“9SRlÝQJlUjda³£þä»€q¶š¯ßoõÊ‚§M�àÙMåý�x�*LŽ×žÈ5ðûö1Â1j¢¶O×/7k¨™ÝN–m6õß3|T `ÕÁ¼œ�3FâÔ

4 haiku (for Max Roach 13)

1.

i need to

catch your brain

and steady it

2.

let’s impeach

this yellow detour

of your memory

3.

how dare

your sweet hands

forget you!

4.

i kiss the

surprise always in

your eyes.

sister haiku (for Pat)

1.

How many

secrets you carried

in your panties

2.

infections

of confections

no retractions

3.

the autumnal

rain announced a

sister’s fragrance

4.

your slanted

black eyes smiled

crystals

5.

can two little

girls holding hands walk unnoticed

in a large house?

6.

young man . . . home from war . . .

envies the subtle

pause of young beauty

7.

disguised as

uncle he picked at

your unbroken spine

8.

how to moisten

the silence of an

afternoon molestation?

9.

silk on your

skin no armor for

the amputee

10.

Birmingham

eyes ignoring

the winter’s confinement

11.

to be born

to be raped

each journey a sudden wave

12.

his touch wore

you down to a

fugitive eye.

13.

the sound of you

sucking your thumb at nite

blows in my ears

14.

all morning

our mother’s voice

beyond the hills.

15 haiku (for Toni Morrison 14)

1.

We know so little

about migrations of souls crossing

oceans. seas of longing;

2.

we have not always been

prepared for landings that held

us suspended above our bones;

3.

in the beginning

there wuz we and they and others

too mournful to be named;

4.

or brought before elders

even held in contempt. they were

so young in their slaughterings;

5.

in the beginning

when memory was sound. there was

bonesmell. bloodtear. whisperscream;

6.

and we arrived

carrying flesh and disguise

expecting nothing;

7.

always searching

for gusts of life

and sermons;

8.

in the absence

of authentic Gods

new memory;

9.

in our escape from plunder

in our nesting on agitated land

new memory;

10.

in our fatigue at living

we saw mountains cracking

skulls, purple stars, colourless nights;

11.

trees praising our innocence

new territories dressing our

limbs in starched bones;

12.

in our traveling to weselves

in the building, in the journeying

to discover our own deaths;

13.

in the beginning

there was a conspiracy of blue eyes

to iron eyes;

14.

new memory falling into death

O will we ever know

what is no more with us;

15.

O will weselves ever

convalesce as we ascend into wave after

wave of bloodmilk?

5 haiku (for Brother Damu 15)

1.

You pointed out

lewd waters mad

with toxic wounds

2.

you world traveller

mixing language

and touch

3.

we see your hands

bandaging disciples

of peace

4.

humming this

earth back

to sanity

5.

silk toned

dapper black

man smiling . . .

6 haiku (for Elizabeth Catlett 16 in Cuernavaca)

1.

La Señora

making us remember

flesh and wind

2.

O how you

help us catch

each other’s breath

3.

a woman’s

arms climbing with

colored dreams

4.

Elizabeth

slides into the pool

hands kissing the water

5.

i pick

up your breath and

remember me

6.

your hands

humming hurricanes

of beauty.

5 haiku

1.

You sniff

dog-like around

language

2.

i taste

your saliva spiked

with applause

3.

painted beads

falling from your

fingertips

4.

poems

going the wrong way

in moonlight

5.

you fast talking

manicured poet

sailing on glass.

2 haiku (for Ras Baraka 17)

1.

Your hands

shout eucalyptus

songs

2.

your poems

the smell of

morning rain.

6 haiku (for Oprah Winfrey 18)

1.

O how we

rinse each other’s

shadows

2.

summertime

roses caught in

our throats

3.

you

position women against

grave diggers

4.

in your laughter

we capture birthdays

in wild colors

5.

you have

rescued women from a

timid ground of loss

6.

in your eyes

we breathe each other’s

dreams.

5 haiku (for Sarah Vaughan 19)

1.

Me in midair

sailing underneath

your lips.

2.

we don’t stare

we don’t seem to care

are we a pair?

3.

where are the clowns

are they all stampeding

my house?

4.

without your

residential breath

i lose my timing.

5.

Send in the clowns

There is space

above the air.

2 haiku

1.

Your eyes

ignite . . . stampede

death

2.

your body turns

towards me

more than baptism.

Ú:JãµR( À¨à„@äO‘"c+˜¥´ö&†}/ƒèq¾HƒS%Éçjãé;ÿßC�§ð?º¾Ê4.rtù‡Þ31ê”0Dü`9 p

5 love haiku

1.

Under

a sexual sky you

coughed swords

2.

your smell

slides under my

fingernails

3.

love

walking backwards

towards assassinations

4.

locust man

eating the grain

of women

5.

your tongue

jelly on my

lips.

7 haiku (for St. Augustine 30)

1.

Playboy of North

Africa, burning the streets before

you learned to genuflect

2.

mama’s boy

holding on to Saint

Monica’s tits

3.

Milan

lover of sculpted

waists

4.

can i reinvent

your pigeon-toed walk

toward God?

5.

can i resurrect

sepulchers, posturing

inside your veins?

6.

can i

spill salt from

your legs?

7.

can i reinvent you and me

to love until i become still

to worship until you become stone?

6 haiku (for Maya Angelou 31)

1.

You have

taught us how

to pray

2.

your poems

yellow tattoos on the

morning dew

3.

we dance

in the eye

of your pores

4.

in a sudden

pause of breath

secrets unlock

5.

you show us

how to arrange our

worldly selves

6.

your poems

a landscape of

seabirds.

haiku woman (La mujer de los ojos 32)

1.

You . . . woman

surrendering your arms

to silk

2.

coming among

us luxurious with

flesh

3.

you allow no

frailty to accent

your blood

4.

you . . . swallowing

the morning as you lean

back on your eyes.

memory haiku

1.

i was born

a three-legged

black child.

2.

carrying an

extra leg for quick

departures.

3.

beneath the sun

i moved in short

Birmingham breaths.

4.

silence of the

house . . . in the kitchen

someone washes the floor.

5.

silence. no words.

just the sound

of earthquakes.

6.

precocious morning

releasing an avalanche

of blood.

7.

in the hospital

mother, you chanted complex

half-moons.

8.

what is it about

childbirth that women

ask for seconds?

9.

how long the nite

to break your body into

a diabetic coma.

10.

how wild the

gust of blood running

down hospital corridors.

11.

do women

make a living singing

death prints?

12.

in my dreams

i rubbed your limbs

until they sparkled.

13.

wherever i am

i patrol

your seasonal death.

14.

i bring you

pine trees and laughter

for your journey.

15.

do you hear me

singing in the mountains

under a constant sky?

16.

i, a passerby

to your death,

cradle your breath.

17.

i, a sleepwalker

to dreams, imagine you a

crane flying south.

18.

every day

i hear your voice

beyond the hills.

haiku poem: 1 year after 9/11

Sweet September morning

how did you change skirts so fast?

What is the population of death

at 8:45 on a Tuesday morning?

How does a country become

an orphan to its own blood?

Will these public deaths

result in private bloodletting?

Amongst the Muslim, the Jew, and the Christian

whom does God love more?

How did you disappear, peace, without

my shawl to accompany you?

What cante jondo 33 comes

from a hijacked plane?

Did you hear the galvanized steel

thundering like hunted buffalo?

Glass towers collapsing in prayer

are you a permanent guest of God?

Why do some days wear the

clothing of a beggar?

Where did these pornographic flames

come from, blaspheming sealed births?

Did they search for pieces of life

by fingerprinting the ash?

Death speaking in a loud voice,

are your words only for the deaf?

What is the language for bones

scratching the air?

What is the accent of life

when windows reflect only death?

Hey death! You furious frequent flier,

can you hear us tasting this earth?

Did the currents recognize her sound

as she sailed into the clouds?

Does death fly south

at the end of the day?

Did you see the burnt bones

sleepwalking a city?

Is that Moses. Muhammad. Buddha. Jesus.

gathering up the morning dead?

Why did you catch them, death,

holding their wings out to dry?

How did this man become

a free-falling soliloquy?

Why did September come whistling

through the air in a red coat?

How hard must the wind

blow to open our hearts?

How to reconnoiter our lives

away from epileptic dreams?

How to live—How to live

without contraband blood?

Is this only an eastern wind

registering signatures of ash?

Do the stars genuflect

with pity toward everyone?

explanatory notes

1. Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz, was a world-renowned African American percussionist, drummer, and composer.[back]

2. Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American Chicagoan murdered in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman.[back]

3. The Philadelphia Murals are a public art project created by local artists and communities that reflect the culture of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. There are over a hundred murals throughout the city, including one of Sonia Sanchez.[back]

4. Nubia was a dear friend of the poet who died quite unexpectedly. This poem was written for her funeral.[back]

5. Odetta was a famed African American folk singer whose songs became anthems for the U.S. civil rights movement.[back]

6. Richard Long is a celebrated African American scholar of literature, culture, and the arts. This poem was written on the occasion of a ceremony in his honor.[back]

7. “Tanabata” is a poem written about stars and hung on trees.[back]

8. Luisa Moreno was the first woman and first Latina member of the California Congress of Industrial Organizations Council and a leader in the United States labor movement.[back]

9. Eugene Redmond is an African American poet from St. Louis.[back]

10. Ray Brown was an African American jazz double bassist, considered by many to be a leading bassist in the bop style. This poem was written after listening to his music on the radio after his death.[back]

11. Beauford Delaney was a renowned African American modernist painter. These haiku were written after viewing his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[back]

12. John Dowell is an African American artist. Tranescape is his painting of the famous jazz musician John Coltrane.[back]

13. “4 haiku (for Max Roach)” were written after a visit to a residential home in Brooklyn.[back]

14. Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize–winning African American author. These haiku were written after reading Morrison’s novel Paradise.[back]

15. Brother Damu was one of the first African American environmental activists and peace workers. He was the founder of Black Voices for Peace and the National Black Environmental Justice Network.[back]

16. Elizabeth Catlett is a major African American sculptor and printmaker in America and Mexico whose career spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She lives in Cuernevaca, Mexico, and New York City.[back]

17. A young African American poet, Ras Baraka is the son of poets Amiri and Amina Baraka.[back]

18. Oprah Winfrey is an African American television host, a producer, and a philanthropist.[back]

19. Sarah Vaughan was an African American jazz singer. These haiku were written while listening to a recording of Vaughan singing “Send in the Clowns.”[back]

20. Freedom’s Sisters is a multimedia, interactive exhibition that brings to life twenty African American women who fought for the equality of people of color.[back]

21. Kathleen Cleaver was active in the Black Panther Party and is a senior lecturer in law at Emory University.[back]

22. Charlayne Hunter-Gault was the first African American student to integrate the University of Georgia. She is a prominent journalist.[back]

23. Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to Congress, the first major-party African American candidate for president of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.[back]

24. Betty Shabazz was a civil rights activist, a professor, and the wife of Malcolm X.[back]

25. Fannie Lou Hamer was the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a voting-rights activist, and a civil rights leader.[back]

26. Barbara Jordan was an African American congresswoman from 1973 to 1979.[back]

27. Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress called the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”[back]

28. Myrlie Evers-Williams was the first full-time chairperson of the NAACP and is the widow of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers.[back]

29. Dr. Dorothy Irene Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997 and is a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.[back]

30. St. Augustine was a philosopher and theologian born in North Africa of Berber descent who wrote The Confessions, often considered the first Western autobiography. These haiku were written after having spent a week sleeping in St. Augustine’s room at a monastery.[back]

31. Maya Angelou is an award-winning African American poet, memoirist, and best-selling author.[back]

32. La mujer de los ojos means “woman of eyes.”[back]

33. A cante jondo is a deep song.[back]

Beacon Press

25 Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892

www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 2010 by Sonia Sanchez

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

The following were previously published: “14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till),” Southern Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Summer 2008); “21 haiku (for Odetta),” Harvard Review 36 (Spring 2009); “1 year after 9/11,” Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer Magazine, September 8, 2002; “10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals),” in More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, Jane Golden, Robin Rice, Natalie Pompilio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).

14  13  12  11          8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Text design and composition by M. F. Rutherglen at Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sanchez, Sonia.

Morning haiku / Sonia Sanchez.

p. cm.

E-ISBN 978-0-8070-6911-0

ISBN 978-0-8070-0131-8 (paperback : alk. paper)

1. Haiku, American.  2. African Americans—Poetry.  I. Title.

PS3569.A468M67 2010

811’.54—dc22

2009027670

Table of Contents

cover

title page

dedication

opening epigraph

contents

preface

10 haiku (for Max Roach)

duende

dance haiku

14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)

10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals)

4 haiku (for Nubia)

21 haiku (for Odetta)

3 haiku (for Richard Long, for Tanabata festival, and for Luisa Moreno)

4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)

7 haiku (for Ray Brown)

6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney)

4 haiku (for Max Roach)

sister haiku (for Pat)

15 haiku (for Toni Morrison)

5 haiku (for Brother Damu)

6 haiku (for Elizabeth Catlett in Cuernavaca)

5 haiku

2 haiku (for Ras Baraka)

6 haiku (for Oprah Winfrey)

5 haiku (for Sarah Vaughan)

2 haiku

5 love haiku

7 haiku (for St. Augustine)

6 haiku (for Maya Angelou)

haiku woman (La mujer de los ojos)

memory haiku

haiku poem-1 year after 9-11

explanatory notes

copyright