Mulling over putting Boxcars on Walnut to sleep for a while. I should clarify; that's my haiku book on Southern Illinois. Not this site, which has the same name, which displays some haiku, and which represents my continued connecton with southern Illinois.

I actually still love the place, with its steamy weather and extensive Shawnee, nothing like that up here. We have better, more Iowish weather in my opinion, drier, cooler, not stagnant ever, but once you're 71 the weather takes up less of your problems. It's the people I miss. I'm five hours away and haven't been down there in the three years I've been back in the state. That's on me. Though I am stuck here to some degree, taking care of people, I could still get down there if I really wanted to, and haven't.

The main reason is that I'm still mourning the loss of my hearing.

But back to the haiku book: it's one of my originals, it's very dear to me, but it's not one of my best haiku books. And nobody ever buys it, so it's beginning to look bad. Bad as in enormous ratings. I get tired of just looking at them.

But, I have a longterm goal of reviving it - bringing it back, expanding it, giving it more of a purpose, and revamping it entirely. Its purpose would be to tell the love story of the woman I met a couple years into the place. Altogether I spent eighteen years in Carbondale. I was a big fish in a small pond. But I left because I was burnt out on my job and because my wife was ambitious and wanted a university that was growing and making promises. We went off to Texas, which ate her up alive. I left part of my heart in Carbondale.

I ponder telling the whole story, in verse...it would be called Boxcars on Walnut, of course.