Seven Thousand Red Leaves

The cloudy afternoon through the red maple –
painted leaves, inked branches, white paper sky.
This could be a haiku about spring
here seven thousand miles away from Osaka
where every line counts as seven beats.

I am an itinerant poet

traveling a circuit from place to place,
not dropping haiku gently in cold snow,
white spring petals or the whispering river.
A knight-errant journeying home and neighborhood on walks
and tossing poems up into the air.

Whitman

Walt, born 1819. He moved around frequently
but at the end of his life
he settled where I started – New Jersey – 
which has more poetry than most imagine, 
and ghosts reciting from Camden to Newark.

Walt Whitman’s home on Mickle St. in Camden, New Jersey