In what is one of many poignant haiku in Sean Lynch’s new collection, he touches poet Nick Virgilio’s gravestone and writes “…sap sticks to my fingertips.” Virgilio’s city grit sticks too, as Sean shows us in his own haiku: the kiss of “…scab riddles junkies,” a fearful inbred dog, along with a shaking veteran at the brink of a chasm only he can see. In Lynch’s book, nature, as it does in Virgilio’s work, helps balance the grit and loss. And through everything in Sean’s book, runs the image of water, whether it is the river as it is “…fed from the blooming sky,” or the marsh that’s struck with “gold fire,” or, finally, something as simple as a small pond on a Camden street.
- 100 Haiku
- Broad Street Line