Matthew Caretti

Continuity Fields

looking both ways
into fresh concrete
a perfect circle

I’ve been a pretty unsavory person in some of those past lives. While I can’t recall all the details, I know I’ve learned some lessons. Forgotten others.

karmic cycle
crashing hard into
buddha nature

So I throw more monk fruit into the blender. Samsara the unsolved koan. Time on the bike helps me to see it more clearly. Feel it. Lactate a playful threshold of my suffering.

midlife confession
the cling of starfish
in the shallows

A dream. Beside the seaside road a tattered box. A heedless deposit at my cycling turnaround point. It moves. Mewls in muted rounds that mix into restlessness.

howling moon
I wake up
to puppies

These days I tend to do the right thing. Take care of all the strays. Yet there are those moments—mosquitos and cockroaches—that call for an immediate prayer of repentance.

autumn moon
forgiving all the men
I used to be

---

Note: The “continuity field” merges objects every 15 seconds to create unified vision. Without the continuity field mechanism, visual perceptions would be fragmented and surreal. See this Psychology Today article for a more detailed explanation.

---

About the Author

Matthew Caretti began publishing his poems in 2009. He has published two books of haibun, Harvesting Stones (2017, winner of the Snapshot Press eChapbook Award) and Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press), and a book of haiku, Ukelele Drift (2023, Red Moon Press). He lives and teaches high school English in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

---