Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
– Elie Wiesel
haiku 168
after the hairball
combing kittens worth of fur
off my shedding cat
Pen to Paper: The Haiku Habit
I don’t get out much. Living where I do, there’s nowhere to go, and my big jaunt is usually from the little farmstead I inhabit to one of the nearby tiny towns, a distance of 10 or 15 miles depending on which way I go.
This is why so many of my haiku are about the dogs, or coyotes, or the weather. There’s not much going on around here. Someone more keenly attuned to the natural world than I am would find enough haiku moments to fill a calendar. As it is, I have to look pretty sharp and then hope a coyote howls at a different kind of moon than I wrote about last time. Needless to say, I’m missing a lot.
But seeking the constellations of life is a valuable thing in itself; writing a good haiku after making the discovery is the cherry on top. As one looks more, it becomes a habit. With diligent practice, the constellations become more numerous, more sharply defined, more richly patterned.
Jeanne Emrich has written about getting into the haiku habit. This is in many ways a primer, but it also reminds those of us who have written haiku for years what it is we’re looking for and what to do with it once we see it. Jeanne has illustrated her essay with some excellent haiku.
Fiction: War Correspondence
John had just finished filing his latest story about war-torn London when his English friend Maurice tapped him on the shoulder.
“This came for you while you were out,” Maurice said, handing John an envelope. “Looks like it’s from the States.”
John took a quick look at the envelope and smiled. “It’s from my girl, Mary, back in Evanston. Just the little pick-me-up I needed today. Nothing like a letter from home to take your mind completely off the war.”
He opened the envelope and removed the letter. It was on a single piece of stationery.
“Dear John,” it began. “I know this will come as a surprise and will be hard for you to understand.”
John’s mouth fell open as he read the few lines. By the time he finished, there was a noise like sirens in his ears. He got up from his desk and stumbled toward the door.
It was pitch black outside. He fumbled in his jacket for a cigarette and his lighter. He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, the tiny flame all the light in John’s world. He stared at it for half a minute after lighting his smoke, and then deliberately closed the case.
The sirens kept blowing in his mind, and to them was added a dull roar like a hundred airplanes. How could Mary dump him like that? And for Todd?
John drew on his cigarette and passed a hand over his forehead. He felt ill. The new whistling sounds in his brain weren’t helping matters.
Mary’s letter had hit him like a ton of bricks. Unnoticed by the sorrowful young man, so did the building he stood next to when the bomb hit it.
There really was nothing like a letter from home to take a person’s mind completely off the war.
Quotable 56
We think in language. And so the quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.
– George Carlin
haiku 167
first June night
cicada chirps
after the rain
Pen to Paper: Haiku Silence
It’s been a while since I did a piece about haiku. Cletis was kind enough to ask for a handful of my poems to share at his blog, and that has me thinking about haiku again.
I intend to say very little, however, in keeping with the subject which Angelee Deodhar has so exactingly written about: how haiku conveys silence. The very idea of using words to describe silence seems paradoxical, and yet a well-written haiku can accomplish this deftly.
More, I need not say; on to Angelee’s essay.
Fiction: Neighborhood Picnic
Sergeant Luckenstiehl wandered around the park, smiling at the children at play, nodding to their parents who were grilling hamburgers and brats and hot dogs – and the occasional steak – and setting the picnic tables. He would soon have to politely decline offers of food. “Regulations,” he would say with genuine regret; these people really knew how to barbecue.
He looked up; there were still a couple of hours before the sun would set behind the 25-story housing complex. The park was in the building’s hollow quadrangle, and Luckenstiehl respected how nicely the residents kept it.
A child ran up to her mother. “Mom! We can’t find Prissy and Janet anywhere!”
Luckenstiehl casually made a quarter turn away from the conversation.
Quotable 55
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
– Vita Sackville-West
haiku 166
fierce winds
batter tender plants
early June