Poets and Poems - Susan Delaney

Moonshadows and Night Rainbows

5 a.m. The moon is high and bright and casts deep shadows. My moonshadow is my compass for my three mile walk. No match for streetlight, it disappears when I walk into a circle of a streetlight.

Night rainbows are silver and can be seen arced in sprinkler mist and in shimmering sheets in dewy grass.

Stopping in the curve of a cul-de-sac, brightly lit by a streetlight, I see a circular band of light around my shadow. When I stretch my arms out, the round silver rainbow extends a foot past my shadow fingertips.

brushed by my moonshadow
the frog
leaps away


Susan writes:

Here I am, at my mini-rolltop, haiku desk, with the bowl I made to hold the scraps of paper on which I write my proto-haiku. The oval bowl is stoneware and is carved on the bottom to resemble the shell of a turtle. The scraps of paper containing proto-haiku can be sticky notes, cash register receipts, envelope fragments, torn index cards, any kind of paper, really. When I can gather the right kind of energy, I pull the scraps of paper out and out and polish them into haiku, tanka or suchlike. The photographer is my darling daughter, Sarah Mech.