Book of the Week: the road behind

Mike Dillon has been plying his way with haiku for three decades. This is his only full-length book from all that time, from Red Moon Press in 2003.

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

All haiku in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Tom Clausen, and are used with permission.

childhood home:
the smoothness of the half-buried rock
we used for home plate

old cemetery:
who'd leave daisies for a boy
gone ninety years?


a warm breeze
passes through the wheat:
Saturday loneliness

spring afternoon:
the barber spins me around
toward the mirror


new calf
apart from the herd:
evening star

wild roses:
the slow green river 
flows to the sea


white-caps comb the dark:
the hands of the ferryman
count my coins

I walk alone:
the constant lights 
of a distant freighter


early sunset lights up
the long road
behind

the first rain drops
pock the river's mouth:
salmon splash


instead
I came here:
wind in the reeds

trillium:
water shines 
from deer tracks


shortest day:
snow beneath the cedar
where our bulbs are

foghorn night:
my coins make a small pile
on the mantle


February dusk:
I step over the light
lingering in the puddle

the last kid picked
running his fastest
to right field