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I try to spend some time each day thinking in haiku. Often I find that space while walking the dog in the woods or by the river or an open field. It’s a quiet, interior time without earbuds or podcasts. My haiku is almost always written in the traditional three-line, 5-7-5 form, with a focus on nature. I usually try to include a kigo word (a reference to the season of the year) and a division, breath, or caesura (often in the form of a colon or a dash that both separates and connects). There are endless variations, and that’s the beauty of haiku. Sometimes a lighthearted one might come, more senryu than serious haiku, and that’s what gets written. It’s something I started doing with more intention a few years ago. I’m not saying that I’m great at this. My focus is on process, not product. Basho’s great line, “The journey itself is home.” I accept that most of the ones that come to me aren’t going to be exemplary.
Thinking in haiku has given me an outlet for calm reflection, a brief time for thinking outside myself and the endless, grim news feed of our troubled world. This morning I wrote this one:
This pine has a life
Of its own: there is nothing
It requires of me.
However, I’m not posting today to show one haiku. Mostly I was eager to share one of the sources of my inspiration, taken from the introduction to Robert Bly’s book of prose poems, The Morning Glory.
I love this passage so much, as if it were written precisely for me, bringing together in one page my growing enthusiasms for trees and haiku and poetry and, importantly, this essential idea of getting “the self” out of the way. I hope you like it. Maybe Bly’s passage here, along with Basho’s haiku, will inspire thoughts and feelings in you, too. Embrace the process. Forget thoughts of “good” or “bad.” And see what happens.
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While we’re gathered here, I might as well tack on a few others . . . I’ve got hundreds of them.
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I have failed to learn
The name of the bird that calls
From the high poplar.
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Three twisted sisters
Beneath the great canopy,
Roots and arms entwined.
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The soft grasp of dusk
Upon the winter shore: black-
Hooded plover waits.
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Steel-gray buckets tapped
Into maples; the crows watch
From snow-covered limbs.
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January rain –-
The old cat stretches, circles,
Eyes slant shut again.
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The beech holds its leaves
Shimmering like winter moons
Papery and light.
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