Chuck Brickley

One Moments

Just before dawn a boy reaches the edge of town and steps into the wild chaparral. He’s not allowed to play there. Hobos, broken glass, coyotes. He walks further in, rubbing his arms to stay warm. Shrubs brush against his jeans. In the growing light, dark twisted shapes become manzanitas. A bird sings. The boy comes to a small clearing, stops.

A jackrabbit. Its quick breaths hang in the cold air, each joining others to form a small cloud above its nose. Suddenly it hops through the cloud and disappears.

a runaway
takes the long way home
scent of wild sage

The Cascade trail opens to an old logging road in the late afternoon sunlight. At last, a way to get back down to the highway before dark. Hitch a ride into town, hoof it to my cabin. A sharp breeze tightens my skin. Shadows of the mountains in the west cross the valley and begin their ascent of slopes in the east. A circling vulture looms larger with each turn. Just down the road, a rock . . . moves.

A snowshoe hare. It wiggles its nose and hops into the understory.

a bookplate mushroom
in my used Lewis Carroll
flickering candlelight

A California sagebrush sparkles with dew. The boy rubs a leaf between forefinger and thumb, smells it, and closes his eyes.

I open mine.

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Note: Parts of the prose first appeared in The Signature Haiku Anthology, edited by Robert Epstein (Middle Island Press, 2020).

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About the Author

Chuck Brickley’s collection of haiku, earthshine (Snapshot Press, 2017), won a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award and Honorable Mentions in the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award and Haiku Canada’s Marianne Bluger Book Award contests. He is currently the HSA contest coordinator and a judge for the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for Individual Poems. Find more at www.chuckbrickley.com.