Raymond J. Learsy: The Humanities: America’s Great Formative Tradition Succumbing To The Financial Crisis

Raymond J. Learsy: The Humanities: America’s Great Formative Tradition Succumbing To The Financial Crisis

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Haiku

A bed without legs
On top, a tall woman sleeps
Hands reaching the floor.

 

Gleaning–Some Lines After Kees, 1926

The pineapple orange grove dead.
Late October, stem end rotting
Branches burned, the tone deaf stork
Flying home. In the citrus tree stand
Across the road, someone turns on
An overhead sprinkler, wind borne
Sprites of water spraying our feet.

A red autumn sky. In a month
Our neighbors will climb into cherry
Pickers, their sharpened clippers
Stirring in the fruit, a thousand
Birds flapping razor edged wings
Through blood orange braids of light.

Enviously, my father glares
Not yet knowing these same men
Will cut him too, hanging like their fruit,
Down from a tree. The clippers dulled
From reaper’s work, the rope wet
With orange sap, my father gleaned
At last from his orange grove, dead.