Charles B. Dickson’s work dropped out of view for a time, and perhaps exhibiting his work here will help people reacquaint themselves with his consistent quality. This attractive chapbook was published by Skyefield Press in 1988.
You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.
All haiku in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Tom Clausen, and are used with permission.
wind-rippled clover the taste of summer ripens in the figsmorning mist evening primrose petals close around dewdropsdarkening pool... purple damselflies merge with duskmartin gourds- twilight glide of steel-blue wingsmoonlit thicket a flock of white-throated sparrows bends a pawpaw boughsucking the sweetness from wild muscadines... the taste of childhoodlingering sunset white shimmer of September on the cotton fieldnursing-home window: birdwatcher in a wheelchair with binocularsreed-fringed shore an otter glistens into its burrowsandstone outcrop a yellow butterfly clings to the fossil fernweedy pasture-- udder-deep in goldenrod, rambling cowsmarsh dawn a rainbow snake's crimson stripes weave into the reedshigh tide at dusk a tattered shrimp net flaps on the gnarled sand-cedara flint arrowhead on the brook's white sand bottom; darting minnowsrainstorm on the pond; beaver pushing a poplar limb to plug the damturbulent as the white gorge, wind in the gorge
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When I was 19-years-old, I sat with Charlie in a New Orleans apartment. As dusk filled the room, we listened to Dylan Thomas reading his poetry – on a hi-fi record. I was almost illiterate and the experience is one that has stayed with me, shaping parts of my life. He told me that no question I asked was “stupid.” I married Charles’ son and later visited his rural family home in Georgia. It was a wonderful place to observe the natural world with piney woods, a pecan orchard, and a cypress swamp. It was there that I learned about mayhaws and may haw jelly. I was moved and amazed when I first encountered Charlie’s haiku and impressed at his sister, Marthalyn’s, lovely chapbook. Charlie, in my experience, was a man of few spoken words. Ahh, but the writing, what a legacy. Thank you for sharing his work.
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