Roger Jones

My College Desk

In moments of leisure, I lean my elbow on it, and forgetting myself and breathing deeply, I cultivate my qi.  — Basho, on his favorite desk  

My writing desk in college is gone. I assembled it from a piece of sparkly Formica-topped wood Dad had cut from a larger piece he used on a kitchen sink cabinet for my grandmother.  Four short mahogany legs, from an old dead TV,  I screwed into the bottom. The table/desk eight inches off the floor:  just right

empty pad
on the desk
in front of me;
grasshopper mind
neither here nor there  

I sit crosslegged at it, night after night, sometimes writing assignments, mostly pummeling out poems on an ancient typewriter on which Granddad wrote letters to Dad during WWII.  Invariably, after hours, exhausted, I lean back, yawn, close my eyes.  I imagine words flying off the page, out the opened window, gone. 

who could I get to read  
such a small poem?  
it ripples around  
my quiet thought,  
soundless as a snowflake 

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About the Author

Roger Jones teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos.  His haibun collection Goodbye was published by Snapshot Press in 2017.