Scott Holmes

The Diagnosis

A bird is singing somewhere in the dark. I wake thinking about the woods near our house when I was a boy, where my friends and I spent most of our summer days. Climbing trees. Catching frogs and snakes. Riding our bikes up and over the Rollercoaster Hills. The path ended for us at the Teenagers’ Woods, where the trees were bigger. The underbrush thicker. The path narrower and dark. Kids our age never went in there. Never even talked about it.

an old treehouse—
Mother’s voice
calling me home

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About the Author

Scott Holmes is a semi-retired independent investor living mostly in rural Wisconsin and Northern California. Though he’s been writing haiku and related forms since the 1980s, he’s only recently begun to share his work.