Some months ago when I became particularly disgruntled with both the national and world scenes, I decided to turn to things that gave me energy rather than depleted it. Consciously not pay attention to the shenanigans going on or fill myself with a mindset that would just twist me up like a wet dish cloth. So I opened cook books for inspiring (and simple) dishes to make. I bought yarn and knit a winter scarf for a friend. I decided to consider some future home/garden improvements. Maybe a new bathroom floor ... a paint job in a bedroom ... a labyrinth in the garden. I also worked on cleaning out old files, doing research on prospective blog projects, reading more poetry ... and ... trying my hand at writing haiku.
Haiku, as you know, is a Japanese-style poem of three lines using only seventeen syllables--five in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the last. I'd never written haiku, so this would be an experiment. But I also wanted to have fun with it and not get too fussy by feeling I absolutely had to adhere to the five-seven-five structure. If I deviated a bit here and there, well then, I deviated.
January 2016
Now, with winter,
Ice-crusted apples still on the tree
Fall to the ground
Looking Out into the Garden After a Winter Storm
As if in a bath
Of bubbles, the Buddha sits
Half covered in snow
A Winter Afternoon
A full-bodied red
Like Homer's wine-dark sea
Fills my Riedel glass
Looking Out the Train Window in Late February
Along the Mohawk River
Ducks at river's edge
Gather beside last ice chunks
To sun in silence
April No-Fool
Gloomy but warmish
April wisps into being
Whoop-dee-do! Welcome!
April 28th
Pink white blue purple
Violets carpet the grass.
For red, a cardinal
How Emily Carr, the Canadian Artist,
Compares Old Age to Fruit on a Tree
Ripe is good, yes, ripe
Just not so rotten you fall
And land with a squish
Lovely poems!
ReplyDeleteM.