It\u2019s indecent to stalk the dead poet. I know that. Bill Kenney, 89 when he died, was the spring breeze in winter. Dying of cancer, he joked dryly, waxed humbly in his haiku about the smallness of our earthly moments, which made him seem impossibly large standing all alone out there on the cliff edge.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0family album<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the stories we tell<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the camera<\/strong><\/p>\n From Kenney\u2019s posthumous collection, Tap Dancing in My Socks <\/a><\/em>(Red Moon Press\/2022), that poem can serve as a field guide for much of his work. His four volumes, all from Red Moon, are dotted with anti-stories about ourselves, in which our array of posturings are sanded down.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 happy hour<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 we don\u2019t mention<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the cancer<\/strong><\/p>\n I came late to Kenney, just as Kenney came late to haiku. He began writing haiku at age 72 (I started at 82.) We were octogenarians together wandering around New York at the same time. Had our paths ever crossed?<\/p>\n In his absence, they seem to cross every day, everywhere, especially when I am alone in the late hours of the night.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 old photo<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the stranger<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve become<\/strong><\/p>\n Those moments in old age of feeling suddenly stranded. Feet not quite on the ground, but not yet under it.<\/p>\n There is a video of him reading<\/a> from his first collection, The Earth Pushes Back (2016)<\/em><\/a> in Santa Fe. Hairless, more or less, jaw slanted a bit, he read with a disarming simplicity.<\/p>\n \u201cI have this problem,\u201d he began, \u201cyou have it too: How do you begin to write a poem when so many poems have already been written? How do you begin to write a haiku when so many haiku have already been written?\u201d<\/p>\n Inclusive, playfully conspiratorial, he had the audience immediately in his pocket. The wise vulnerable father everyone wishes they had. He explained at one point how the haiku he was about to read got written. A \u201cbutterfly\u201d haiku. The winged warhorse of the genre.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first I wrote, butterfly\/ how long\/ will I remember you. A delightful moment with the butterfly. How long will it last? But looking at it on the page, I wasn\u2019t satisfied. The butterfly just seemed to be lying there somehow. Then I thought what I really wanted to ask is butterfly\/ how long will you\/ remember me.\u201d<\/p>\n The poet\u2019s concern with mortality is culled gently from the unlikely subject of the butterfly. Seen from this unexpected angle, we get a deeply unsettling betrayal of our normal butterfly expectation of well-being. We get transformative insight.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a tinge of mortality to whatever he touched,\u201d Red Moon publisher Jim Kacian, remembers. \u201cAs though he knew his time in haiku wouldn\u2019t be long.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 rainy autumn\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the last time we did it<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0a second time<\/strong><\/p>\n An inadvertent \u201cAh\u201d arises within me. I have arrived, with Kenney, at a mutual crossing point. Geriatric dating, where emptiness goes to fill itself with what has gone. Man\u2019s last chance to play romantic roulette.<\/p>\n What, I wonder, would Master Basho make of the geriatric dating haiku? Open to all sorts of strange experiences himself, he may well have been amused or bemused.<\/p>\n But his more parochial successors, wedded to the standard haiku nature poem, would no doubt have been scandalized.<\/p>\n Having been where Kenney went, I know of the caution its risk management (lover at 80\/ quietly\/ wanna lie down?) requires. Kenney had the talent to turn amorous dross into haiku gold.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0safe sex<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 saying nothing<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll regret<\/strong><\/p>\n Or this:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 singles bar<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 she tells him she always<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 picks losers<\/strong><\/p>\n His trade-off\u2014the aliveness of eros contending against the blows of rejection on the lip of the grave.<\/p>\n The yawning space at the right-hand margin allows the reader a long pause to take it all in, to be the participant in what has been said or left unsaid, to relate and project his or her own story. My projection was trying to imagine myself as Kenney, old and dying, but able to remain engaged and kind to the end. How to remain open while everything around you is closing down.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 prognosis terminal<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 his favorite ice cream<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 melts in the cup<\/strong><\/p>\n The courage to shake off all illusions, to display quietly the little that remains in the poet\u2019s punctured bag.<\/p>\n In the background always, his gentle ironic hum.<\/p>\n \u00a0 wind advisory<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 I cut one more word<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0from a haiku<\/strong><\/p>\n With a little luck, it will land in my pocket. The man knew what he was looking at. He could winnow the genuine from the fake without making a big fuss about either.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 soft rain<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 the way the oncologist<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 says, \u201cwe.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Bill Kenney, poet laureate of mortality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Hirschfield is a New York-based writer and poet. He has spent much of the last five years writing and assembling poems about his mother\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s. In 2019, Presa Press published a volume of his poems titled, <\/em>The Road to Canaan. His work has appeared in <\/em>Parabola, Tricycle, Spirituality & Health, Sojourners, The Moth (Ireland), <\/em>Tears in The Fence (UK), and other publications.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Two Old Poets: Portrait of A Friendship<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nRead more by Robert Hirschfield:<\/strong><\/h2>\n