By the Campfire

Tapering pines point

as fingers of smoke invoke

half moon’s slow ascent

* * *

[This is adapted from one of the first haiku I ever wrote, while camping with my family when I was 19. Everyone else had gone to bed and I remained out to watch the night. Decades later, I still remember the snapping of the fire and the growing chill as it waned, the mysteries in the shadows all around, the glorious spread of stars overhead ringed by the silhouettes of the trees, the rising of the silver moon with silent majesty -- and the impulse to impress it all into a poem. And now I can share it with you!]