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Writer's pictureDuru Gungor

Haiku for an Uncertain Fall

Updated: Jan 15, 2021

(Written between September and the beginning of November, 2020. I kept the original order of composition mostly intact; I thought it was sort of interesting to follow the ceaseless swaying of the spirit from silly to somber, brave to fearful, personal to universal. Through the pandemic, the problems of two nations and some more, health issues, growing pains (a constant for the regressive) and, most recently, the suffocating horror of the Izmir earthquake, I wrote some forty-five of these, barely realizing I was working on them. After the first trials, I can say I am keen on both the process and the product, which is a diary of the days, but a diary that isn't really mine.)


napping in the sun

a fat fly finally stirs

maybe so should I


this evening’s report

three contrails, four geese, two hawks

one human watching

they're so much at home

lavender stems in a vase

yet I never am


clouds snaking in line

sidling up to the hot teapot

I let the chill come


© Duru Gungor

pools of light moving

early morn’s dumpster diving

on a beat-up bike

just the sound of this

pencil scratching till I look up

and lo, it’s light out

should it be this hard

to be left alone, afloat

with a book and the rain?


no lover no child

youngish unless near the young

must be a poet


wet circles crisscross

golden bubbles swim upward

I swear this beer smiles

pay to spend money

a survey each time you spend

under laughing stars

I’m so lazy I’m glad

fall showers water the plants

on my balcony

puddle on the roof

shivers gray to gold under

a hesitant storm

hissing skies darken

the city seeks the day’s end

can’t I linger more?

when I’m out of time

at the day’s end is when I

hunger most for life

a bed of dry leaves

impossible for squirrels

to fight discreetly

© Duru Gungor

for all the living

falling silent to hear all

the dead with soft smiles

first snow of the year

the morn unveils a full moon

with a jokester’s laugh

I am a painting

framed and tilting to the left

so should the whole house

November’s fly soars

with a drunken buzz, knowing

and not knowing the end


(Winter haiku next, with some luck...)

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