Saturday, January 17, 2009

coffee cup
warming my hand
--paper's cold

bitter cold
afternoon sky filled
with birdsongs

even trees
must be too cold
to move

cat leads me
to his empty dish
at full meow

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

cricket song
keeps me awake
off and on

flash of red
cardinal wings flap
--cloudy day

stormy night~
everyone knows
a ghost story

burrowing
under my blankets
...winter winds

even the curtains stir ... winter winds

still in bed
til the last minute --
winter morning

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Breaking Through... A Bit

she talks
to her dog
then sees me

sycamores
grow older
and whiter

hopping
treetop to twilight
...winter crows

are their calls
beautiful
to other crows?

lost dog note
flapping on the tree
...blown away

*******
I think I'm beginning to concentrate my thoughts and use the images better in my forays into fewer syllables.

The first one amuses me because I see a few ways of interpreting it.


BONUS EXPERIMENT:

geese call back and forth their haiku


Flying geese are often symbolic of haiku... like a couple of lines on the page of the sky.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Beautiful Day

two strollers,
one dog, three neighbors --
spring-like day

sparrows fuss
safe in a green bush
hawk just poops

here & there
evergreens curbside
-- January

on its back,
cat stretches one paw
--winter sun

window sill
a thin line of snow:
cold sunrise

snowstorm:
cardinal song
where

where

where


******
It was such a great day yesterday... high 50s, though I heard even higher from some people. I took a nice walk to a friend's house to play board games. On the way, I saw lots of people out doing things... and the Christmas trees on the curbs.

In the back yard here, there is a big old stump overgrown with honeysuckle. It's a delight when it's blooming, and even now still has a lot of green leaves -- dark green and a little withered, but still... There's a large gathering of sparrows that hangs around at the birdfeeder in a neighbor's yard. However, they often zip over to the stump/bush when they feel threatened, usually perched on top.

A hawk also travels through the neighborhood frequently. The hawk was sitting on the phone line and would swoop down every once in a while, when it had potential prey in its sites. It made one raid to the stump/bush and all the sparrows set up an alarm and just kept chirping and chirping. The hawk returned to the phone line and would turn in their direction every once in a while... then turned away and pooped.

It seemed to be making a commentary on all their commotion.

The last one is an imagined scene.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Experiments and revisiting old work

so... still searching out different things. found a suggestion of going 3/5/3.

Japanese inherently has more syllables than English. which means that most of the words have more syllables than English words. I'm finding the demands to pare down are more rewarding, although I still don't feel like they have all that I would like in a haiku.

I took a walk and tried the "20 shells" technique I read of today. essentially, you go somewhere and write a haiku of something you observe. then another... just go into it without thinking too much... then another... and so on until you have 20 poems.

these are the best of those, with some notes, and some other pieces:

old folks' home
smiles looking out
at the snow (1)

cold sunset
dark going up to light
sycamores

pink post-it
blowing down the street
with dry leaves (2)

turned up earth
among the dead leaves
--happy squireel

dusty jars
of tomatoes
...still red

winter stew--
the garden was good
this year

winter stew--
beginning to plan
new garden

one paw
cat turns back
from door

aspen leaf
still golden
in blue ice



not all of these came from the walk, obviously.

1. it wasn't snowing, but i did go by an assisted living facility nearby and my imagination took over. I like the contrast of the warm smiles and the cold snow... and when anyone smiles looking at snow, I think they have a child's smile, so there is also the contrast of young and old.

2. again, it's the contrast. the post-it will always be an unnaturally bright color, unless it fades from sun or gets covered with mud. the leaves, on the other hand, are not as interesting to see, but they are part of the natural world.

REVISIT:

winter churchyard:
everything snow-covered
but one, small grave

don't know why I've been thinking of this one, but I have. i think this really captures the "haiku moment" as it's called. I think of the moment as a single flash of an image that should make the reader think a way into the poem.

in some ways, it may be the best haiku i've written. i think it captures the moment, but i still want to "streamline" it a little.

the image is very straightforward to me: probably a country setting, since that's where one would find a proper "churchyard," covered in snow. but the last detail sort of "zooms in" on one part of the scene. my hope is that it invites the reader to think about what has happened.

anyway... that's been on my mind, probably because i think it's pretty successful and i want to find that success with fewer syllables.

cheers!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

experiments

I read a suggestion that to write haiku inEnglish in a manner more similar to Japanese haiku, the syllable count should probably be more like 2/3/2, so I've been trying it. Admittedly, it's only been one day of trying it, and I can see some merit in it -- it concentrates the image at the same time it leaves it more suggestive. I don't feel like I've really "broken through" to finding strong poems out of it, but I'm willing to share what I've done so far...

cold wind --
seeing you...
lip balm

twilight --
my curtain
open

squirrel drops
birdfeeder
flutters

streetlight
flickers on
bare tree

headlights
neighbor's dog
watching

And one inspired by my friend Shonda:

my desk
paper cranes
only ten

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

bare tree-tops
blending into the dark sky ...
twilight... ending...



a still winter night
the moon looks frozen
in the fog



even in winter
honysuckle bush quivers
with sparrows



winter sunrise..
treetop has only birds
in the first light



****************************

Got a lovely e-card from a friend that was about the hope that spring can bring... needing the hope right now, needing the spring.

So, I ordered these to move from cold and dark to the hope of light returning, of warmth and possibility.