A Room of My Own: Father Haiku

The day after Father's Day

pre-dawn silence

thoughts of my father

in the past tense

Note: This haiku is a sequel to my haiku sequence below:

A Man of Few Words

(A haiku sequence for my father who was born in mainland China, lived most of his adult life in Taiwan, died and was buried there in 2022)

a lone star

Father's dreamworld becomes

his hospice window

the slanted beam

of a winter sun ...

Father's last smile

morning chill

a part of me lowered

with Father's coffin

sleepless again

I hear Father crying out

Mama, I'm coming home

this dream loop:

Father rides on my shoulders

into the Taiwan Strait

Father waving his hand

just before I wake up ...

this false dawn

Firelies' Light, 27 2023

Added:

Pacific sunrise --

alone after a storm

I listen 

to the flat calm 

of my inner world

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, LXX

one by one

friends leave me in Toronto

for small towns 

they fancy a house with a lawn,

a backyard pool and dogs

FYI: Toronto Star, Oct. 22, 2022: ‘An exodus of families’: Toronto’s decline in children should be an election issue: We are all familiar with dystopian narratives of societies where children are scarce. Toronto is in danger of becoming such a place.

As Ontario’s population ages and relies on immigration for expansion, children represent a shrinking percentage of the overall total. Some critics have summed up the failures in a single word: housing. As in there simply isn’t enough for families, neither in suitable forms nor at attainable prices.