Twelve American Sentences

First dark; lichen breathe after water — no wind; dawn on seed tendril.

Garden bough, bird can listen summer, the sun ancient and animal.

Warm vine when you cycle, happy gentle wild spirit: behold my bright.

River like light; lonely life with only winter cloud shade secret blue.

Quiet watch, grow shine above soft wild — feel fresh fall, to thrive how squirrel.

Soon spring, beneath deep almost air that will let cold blossom climb rock, root.

Sweet rose always why insect walk through leaves, tree breeze, thick mountain mosses.

Deep dawn blankets gentle flower garden; how shine stone or river rock.

You wander that summer sanctuary, grow happy — wet mountain moon.

Cover for love make prairie night sweet secret they see above wild cloud.

Bee murmur give bloom a soft rustle, as thick sun colour rose vivid.

Almost dusk here, bird watch — this daffodil and grass rest: green harmony.

The Sunday Mini-Challenge at 'imaginary garden with real toads' asks us to be inspired by the poetry of Marilyn Chin. Among others of her extraordinary poems, we were directed to her Twenty Five Haiku. I noticed they were in fact American Sentences, a form of haiku devised by Allen Ginsberg for Westerners — but with a vivid intensity I had not seen before in any American Sentence. 

Mine are not haiku (or even American Sentences) as I'm used to writing them — i.e. in-the-moment observations of the external world — and they are not meant as imitations of Chin's remarkable work. I am sill exploring the Magnetic Poetry site, so these are composed by selecting random words and using scenes from my imagination. This time I used the Nature kit.