Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that is normally composed of three lines. The version I’m most familiar with is where the first and last lines are 5 sylables, the center is 7. It’s kind of interesting how things come out when you do this. Since three lines are not enough for me, I use the Zen approach and just continue until the story is done. For example, here’s some I just made up, just now …

Animal Alarm Clock

Today I awoke

to a dog licking my hand.

His tongue is real soft.

The cat, however,

has a tongue made like a rasp.

It leaves marks on me.

They do this each day

because they are both hungry.

I feed the dog first.

I know … it’s not elegant, but it’s descriptive. Like this one.

 Monday

Today is Sunday

and it’s likely tomorow

is no doubt Monday.

I am retired,

so I no longer car pool

and get to sleep in.

OK … I’ll stop. It’s goofy, but doing this is a good exercise in making sense of pretty much any situation using small words. How convenient is that? Ooops, here’s another one …

Lyle

Lyle is my brother.

I went to his funeral,

But he is still here.

Dwelling in my mind,

he will be with me always

He is with me now.

OK – that’s it, no more, please!

Today I did nothing of consequence except take Diane’s Mom, Jean, shopping for food. Turns out she hasn’t eaten for the last 3 days because she ran out. That’s a lie, of course … she only ran out yesterday. And, she only ran out of milk. I also shopped for us, not something I do much of because Jean’s daughter, Diane, takes care of me quite nicely. It was interesting to roll the cart up and down the aisles at Safeway, trying to get only the things she had on the list, but I couldn’t help myself. I bought a piece of never frozen salmon, and macaroni & cheese because it looked good. Diane called while I was in the store and asked for tomatoes, where weren’t on the list so I was able to get permission to buy the salmon and macaroni.

We’re going to try a vegetarian diet for a while and see if it helps with Diane’s diverticulitis. Maybe it will do something good for me, too. Either way, I’m all in to help Diane shed this “stuff”. Ruth knows what we’re dealing with, here. It’s no fun.

I just talked with brother Jack who is working 86 hours a week at the old plant where he used to work. He’s done this a number of times to help with their annual scheduled shutdown for maintenance and upgrades. One of his responsibilities in the past was scaffolding and he got this really neat hat from the company that put them up. Their motto was “Erections are our business”. Cute. That should be Hooters motto. I am speaking out of turn here because I’ve never been to a Hooters so have no frame of reference for that comment. But, I’ve seen pictures. This time Jack is in charge of everything. He’s been promoted. That’s why he gets to work so many hours each week. He has four of those to go so pray he makes it.

Now I’m going to quit and watch TV with my first wife. She’s been here for a while.