Rockford Haiku

Six years ago photographer Ryan Davis and poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg began a weekly urban hike always beginning in the exact same place in the virtual geographical center of Rockford and radiating out in a different direction each time.

This book is about what happens when a poet and a photographer take the same steps on the same streets in the same town so many times that all of the places and things that seemed so familiar in the beginning became new and mysterious... and magical. 

From iconic Rockford landmarks like the Faust, Midway, and Times Theatre, to long-forgotten ghost murals and infinite susprises discovered in places rarely accessed except on foot, Davis and Vaultonburg documented in photographs and haiku a version of Rockford few ever experience. We cordially invite you to come see these images and words from their upcoming book Hike You!

Hike You!: Five Years of Photographs and Haiku From the Heart of Rockford

A bike that had been submerged in the Rock River suddenly resurfaces outside the Rockford Register Star building. 

Resurfacing 

a little mud in my

gears won't make me forget my

heart is the motor

Two historic buildings in the heart of Downtown Rockford, the Faust Hotel and the Midway Theater,  take on a mystical quality when shrouded in a December fog.

The Faust In Fog

December fog like

A most graceful visitor

Refuses to stay

Behind the long closed Four Seasons on Broadway

summer, then Autumn

within one breath, stray cats

pass in the alley

On our weekly haiku hike over the past six years I have written dozens of haiku about the city I was born in. It has been a transformative time for me. 

Beattie Park

your souls raise the soil

of May Day like the breast of

Mother Earth herself

The Times

your modest marquee

the proud grin of a third child

missing their first tooth

Midway

lost somewhere between

now and then, a harsh reminder

the show always ends

I'm certainly not the same person who started this journey. I'm not even the same writer. It's not eveb the same world. But on our hikes through the alleys and through the overlooked and forgotten places I think both of us have learned that nothing is really ever forgotten.