Letter to His Fellow Mendicants

Letter to his fellow mendicants
(a haibun)

Speckled indigo fields of mist move across old, rounded hills at dusk. It's been another solid week of rain. I can't seem to feel my hands anymore; I lost my feet to the flood last month. They drifted south with my yellow boots. Now, mold grows in my lungs, and I have coughed pink onto the linens, spat green in the shower. The air is pixelated with spores; you can see parasites everywhere, waiting to sink their roots in. Is this my hair I am sleeping on, this sackcloth, or the fronds of fungi? Has my skin become so scraped down, so melted, that even a lover's touch leaves raw welts? I can't see the light fade anymore. I have to take my pills again.

even at dusk, dusk
gathers and blinds this old crow—
walking-stick clacking