Jim Kacian

the godless month

a late autumn trek to Raven’s Rocks, the trail nearly hidden beneath bronzed leaves, making the forest feel untrammeled     weirdly verdant cane of denuded greenbrier, shining as with some private ardor in the midst of decline    brilliant air gutted of birds, save for hugger-muggering ravens and crows, annoyed

two rills empty the swales running higher than usual from recent rain     away from them, on higher ground, there is only absence of sound, absence of presence     in a wood where it’s too easy to be observed, nothing is willing to be found, not even a gnat

at the top of the ridge, looking down from the eponymous rocks, the hollow scattered with boulders from rock slides of centuries past     from this aerial view through the emptied trees, three deer can be seen nosing through underbrush, each separate from the others, each sleekly, superbly round against the linearity of simpled woods, scarcely denting the forest with their hooves and beings     the barest hint of a deer path     each of them follows and at the same time meanders from it     some part of me wants to move with them, gracile and sleek, and some other part wants to scare them up, so they become even warier of humans and our capacity for long-range slaughter     instead i simply watch from my perch, able to predict their movements even as they are not

mulling it over the legs of the brandy

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About the Author

Jim Kacian is founder and president of The Haiku Foundation as well as chairman of its board; founder and owner of Red Moon Press; and editor in chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013).