Summer Haiku

cat stretched
on the quilt -
one patch of sunlight

By kind permission of John McDonald

via Summer Haiku 2008

Spring Poetry

A bit of an old chestnut, this (ha ha), but a splendid poem nevertheless.






Philip Larkin - The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Haiku Explained

A number of people have contacted me asking for an explanation of the haiku I was so impressed with. So I'll explain how I read it:

so suddenly winter - I took this at face value. The author has experienced a sudden onset of winter, perhaps waking up to find everything covered with snow, although the weather had been mild previously.

baby teeth at the bottom
of the button jar - I know from experience the poignancy of coming across baby teeth you've kept. It brings memories of the children when they were very young, and leads you to compare how big they are now, although it seems only yesterday you swapped these teeth for money "from the tooth fairy" and stored them carefully in the button jar.

Then I had an "aha" moment. In the light of the poignant baby teeth in the button jar, I re-evaluated the first line of the haiku "so suddenly winter". Perhaps the author isn't commenting on a sudden onset of wintry weather, but a sudden feeling of having become old, a sudden awareness of how long it is since these teeth were stored away.

And that's what made me catch my breath.

Now I look at the four paragraphs it took to explain that, and I know I will never write a good haiku. But I do enjoy reading them.

Winter Haiku

I've been reading some books of poetry recently. I don't know very much about poetry; I can't tell a good poem from a bad poem. But sometimes when I read a poem it makes me catch my breath. This one did.

so suddenly winter
baby teeth at the bottom
of the button jar
--Carolyn Hall (Water Lines, Snapshot Press, 2006)

(found at Wikipedia's entry for Haiku)

Autumn Haiku

Not just any 17-syllable phrase is a haiku. Not even poetic sentiments that break 5-7-5 are necessarily haikus. I'm told that the essence of haiku is the "haiku moment" - a moment where time seems to stand still in perfect consciousness of the instant, expressed in the most concise poetic form possible.

I've experienced moments like that. For example, last night Sam and I went out to see the harvest moon. Walking up the road towards the open field, Sam was scared of the dark, so I picked him up and carried him in my arms. When we saw the moon, it was so bright, it cast our shadows on the ground. We both just stood there and watched it for a while.

I'm a wordy, rambling person (I'm sure you've noticed) and I wouldn't dare try to express such a moment as a haiku. But I liked this one, written over 200 years ago by a Japanese gentleman-poet:

Such a moon -
Even the thief
pauses to sing.

Spring Haiku

I've been reading Japanese Haikus recently. I knew that they were a traditional form of Japanese poetry, 17 syllables long, but I didn't know the length was chosen to be the duration of a single breath. I didn't know they were traditionally about the four seasons and the turning of the year. And I didn't know that a traditional Zen story tells of a young student who asked his master whether it is true that Zen masters are able to perform miracles. The teacher assured him it was true. What kinds of miracles? Fetching water and carrying firewood. "Those who practice this are all miracle buddhas."

I like that.

I liked this haiku, too.

Sitting silently,
Doing nothing,
Spring comes,
And the grass grows by itself.

A Pocketful of Rhyme

My 8-year-old son, Tom, is a published poet. His poem "Wings" was a winner of a national children's poetry competition and was published in the anthology
"Pocketful of Rhyme". I'm so proud of him. I have written my share of poetry, but I have never had any published. So here it is (with permission from the author).

Wings

If I had wings
I would touch stampeding winds in a tornado.

If I had wings
I would taste water from the very crust of the world.

If I had wings
I would listen to a meteor crash to Earth penetratingly.

If I had wings
I would gaze at the burning American forest fire.

If I had wings
I would dream of flying with geese in the shape of a V.

If I had wings
I would join the American army and explore the Pentagon.

If I had wings
I would touch clouds and see the wind giants, who argue a lot.