Uncle Mike's
Autumn Views

By Michael P. Garofalo

          The last seed
falls from the sunflower—
          empty pond.

          The long awaited
rattle of rain on rooftops—
           Thanksgiving Day.

    mums flowering,
     zinnias flowering—
        me wondering

Carrying home
her baby sister—
a sermon walking.

In the gentle breeze,
shimmering mulberry leaves—
oblique sun.

All the cabbages in our garden are robust green to the core;
All the peppers are dead black,
not red anymore.
The onions are thriving,
the tomatoes all gone,
The lettuce is rising,
the pecans all stored—
It’s wet now in Red Bluff,
Winter’s knocking at the door.

Flagpole lanyard clanking
in the brisk breeze—
News of War.

     angry men
         ranting—
  barking dogs

Broken by strokes,
Fragments of Mind gone awry—
Lost in his own home.

     a jay
     perched on a branch—
     misty December morn

Cuttings - Haiku - October

The Spirit of Gardening

October - Quotations & Poetry

Faces in the rolling clouds;
Thinking out loud,
nothing strange,
Always Mind at its Game.

bowls, plates, cups, chopsticks,
glasses of Sapporo beer—
    fine Saba Maki

hot, hot
nostrils flared—
          wasabi

    little white duck
    floating alone—
    grand-children playing

In the cold pond
   Breathing slowly
Horsetail roots.
Withered horsetail leaves
drooping into pond scum—
Seedpods bursting white.
Ripe brown horsetails split,
   Spewing cottony seedlings
   Onto the wind's back.
The murky still pond
mirrors the cloudy skies—
  horsetail seeds float by ...

a hint of winter
off the wind—
split pomegranates

Overhead, galaxies retreat,
Below, bubbling red lava holds;
Between, the voices of the night
bouncing between my ears
disappear into dying campfires.

Cuttings - Haiku - November

The Spirit of Gardening

November - Quotations, Poetry

Some philosophers enjoy
the rush of mental masochism,
the bondage to fashionable ideas,
the titillations of traditions,
the painful flagellation with
   keen, clear, sharp cutting words,
the humiliation of utter confusion,
the euphoria of the games,
the charms of the fantastic
   alluring theaters of thought,
the submisssion to
    non-experiential concepts,
the fetishes of errors and illusions.

Stone Lagoon and sky
become one—
     deepening fog.

    Carcass smells;
vultures ripping up
a beached whale.

The Other-Fulfilling Prophesy
comes true:
What you never thought
you'd become, you do.

The tule fog
fills the sky—
      Yuletide.

  November

     a bold zero
     inked on the scroll—
fancies of one hand clapping

  My breath follows
  the chill wind—
a morning walk.

      The blinded
      following the blind—
not listening.

Wide-eyed
smiling-child—
Christmas

Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series

The Spirit of Gardening

November - Quotations & Poetry

Gardens are demanding pets.
A garden is made up of stories,
   not things.
You are given Today - make it matter.
A callused palm and dirty fingernails
   precede a Green Thumb.
To garden is the reward.
Absolutes squirm beneath realities.
Your garden will do for you in
   proportion to what you do for it.

Pulling Onions- Over 1,000 One-Liners

thankfully
repeated
generosity

October

Flooded rice fields
full of ducks—
     Christmas Eve.

Yesterday, I was thinking
about the "Absolute"
(whatever that is,
or means, or creates,
or controls, or becomes).

Absolute Zero - Death!
Clearly, a deep shivering Super-Conducting
Absolute No.

Then,
The Past: a second ago, a century ago...
Dead Time—
Absolutely kaputt!

Newton's Absolute Time—
Tilted over by Einstein's Mind,
his equations, the tested finds.

Cuttings - Haiku - December

The Spirit of Gardening

December - Quotations - Poetry

The arrow of Time never rests,
moving forward unrelenting
    irreversible
from hot towards cold
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.
Or,
so it seems,
    to us,
    with our little particulars in view
    and our social habits a must.

The spiderwebs of Time are legion
multitudes of nows of heres;
Uncountable heres and theres
    unhitched
from any eternal present everywhere.

Facing off, fists up,
eyeballs to eyeballs;
two boys gather a crowd.

Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo

Haiku, Brief Free Verse, Photos
Tercets, Concrete Poems, Quartets
Cinquains, Waka, Couplets, Senryu
30 Letters Max Per Line of Text
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series

Behind the iron Buddha's
straight back—
a cricket chirping.

my eyes
trace her figure—
the dog sniffs

Traffic halted
to clear a rockslide—
    the scent of cedars.

Pulling up
twisted tomato vines—
long autumn shadows.

Cuddling his great-grandson
before the baptism—
New Year's Eve.

Last day of Autumn;
clothes in a closet,
next year's calendar—
    Form is emptiness.

First day of Winter;
all trees are leafless,
kitchen table bare—
    Emptiness is form.

Poetry by Michael P. Garofalo

Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series

Cuttings: Haiku and Short Poems

Pulling Onions: Over 1,000 One-Liners

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The Spirit of Gardening

Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series #5

Text, graphics, and webpage design
by Michael P. Garofalo.
Most photographs by Karen Garofalo,
a few by Michael Garofalo.
Updated: June 13, 2022
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    All Rights Reserved