David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Columbine (New England Trail Haibun)

Finding soil deep in secret crevices among broken chunks of basalt, clusters of columbine trumpet spring.  Seemingly growing from rocks, long slender stems dangle like pendant horns, five curling spurs arcing from the top.  Brilliant red and yellow beneath scraggy trees, they’re lit like elfin lanterns in late afternoon sunlight.

Delicate, but tenacious, they cling to life on the droughty, gust-charged heights, their curved spur tips shaped like the talons of raptors kettling above on the cliff caused thermals.  These rock bells ring with the wind’s voice.

blooming among rocks
delicate brink survivor
nectar for the eye

(Haibun is a marriage of prose and haiku.  It was first practiced by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who perfected the form in a journal he kept on a trip to the remote regions of northern Japan. Gary Snyder, James Merrill, and Jack Kerouac are among American interpreters of the genre.  Haibun best expresses the spirit of the New England Trail because it combines clear-eyed prose descriptions of people, objects and places along with poetry that awakens the imagination.)

The New England National Scenic Trail, a unit of the National Park Service, runs 215 miles from Guilford, Connecticut to the Massachusetts/ New Hampshire border.  The trail is maintained by volunteers of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association in Connecticut and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Massachusetts.  For more go to https://newenglandtrail.org/

West Peak, Black Dog (New England Trail Haibun)

I carefully watch my step climbing the talus slope of uneven broken rock fallen from cliffs above.  A wrong step, a loose stone sliding underfoot could send me down hundreds of feet.  I think about the black dog.  I’d seen a sooty-looking spaniel on this trail years ago, a happy creature that caused me to smile.  He was followed soon after by a red-bearded man I assumed was his owner.  Now I’m not sure.

People have died on this ridge of grotesque rock shapes, violent winds, and sudden storms that darken the path in clouds.  Some blame the deaths on the black dog that has long been said to wander these lonely slopes.  If you meet him, the story goes, the first time will be for joy, the second for sorrow, but the third means you will die.

Walking ever upward, I squeeze between two jagged stone pillars and then cross a slope of fallen stone blocks requiring a hopscotch in heavy boots.  A four-foot-long black racer snake sunning in a crevice startles me and slides away.  Chickadees chant their dee, dee, dee mantra in twisted oaks.

I’m not much for ghosts or demons, but the black dog haunts.  No matter a summit antenna farm, blue blazes and other signs of a mundane, pragmatic world, this is a foreboding place where people best be visitors.  The trail meanders nonchalantly along the uneven edge of nothingness at sheer cliffs.  Footing is tricky, and glancing at spacious views across a valley of farms, factories, homes, transmission towers, forest and swamp tempts fate, stirs the black dog.

breath-taking vistas
narrow trail twists by crag cliffs            
black dog treachery

 

(Haibun is a marriage of prose and haiku.  It was first practiced by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who perfected the form in a journal he kept on a trip to the remote regions of northern Japan. Gary Snyder, James Merrill, and Jack Kerouac are among American interpreters of the genre.  Haibun best expresses the spirit of the New England Trail because it combines clear-eyed prose descriptions of people, objects and places along with poetry that awakens the imagination.)

The New England National Scenic Trail, a unit of the National Park Service, runs 215 miles from Guilford, Connecticut to the Massachusetts/ New Hampshire border.  The trail is maintained by volunteers of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association in Connecticut and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Massachusetts.  For more go to https://newenglandtrail.org/

 

Time Again for a Connecticut Poet Governor

It’s time we elect a poet as governor of Connecticut.  We’ve had a seemingly endless series of professional politicians, lawyers, and businesspeople on the ballot.  Let’s vote for change.  Although I’m as fatigued as anyone by the long presidential campaign, it’s not too early to look ahead and see who will lead our state in two years.  Candidates are already throwing their hats in the ring.

A poet occupying the second floor corner office under the capitol’s gold dome?  Sounds crazy, no?  But Wilbert Snow was a nationally acclaimed poet and the author of five volumes of verse when he became governor.  A resident of Middletown and professor at Wesleyan, Snow was lieutenant governor under Governor Raymond E. Baldwin.  He was defeated as the Democratic nominee for the top post on Election Day 1946, but became governor on December 27 when Baldwin resigned to take a vacant U.S. Senate seat.  His term lasted only thirteen days before the man who defeated him at the polls in November assumed the state’s highest office, not enough time for poetry to triumph.