
Growing Darkness
By John Thompson & Jackie Maugh Robinson
autumn grasshopper
perfectly camouflaged
but for its shadow
with sundown goes
all colors of day
falling leaves—
the way one stands out
from the rest
sugar maple sweetness
drip by drip by bucketfuls
early frost
late ripened berries
worth a few scratches
last campfire
before the snows—
a bright Dog Star sets

John Thompson is a renowned rengay poet .John collaborated on the first published chapbook of rengay, Hammerhorn Lake, with Garry Gay and Michael Dylan Welch in 1995. In 2008 John published another rengay book, The Unlocked Gate with Garry Gay. Although John has had many rengay published, publication is not the major reason he writes rengay. Over the past three decades John has written hundreds of rengay with haiku writers around the globe. John is most grateful for the poetic dialogues and relationships that naturally arose from rengay’s collaborative writing process.
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Jackie Maugh Robinson is a renowned poet of the various Japanese genres. He loves to write in genres like haiku, tanka and rengay.