I stood on the ramparts
that cold, wet morning
looking out over the waiting
Irish Sea, this day offering
only rain and a November chill.
Write haiku, she said to us
and I thought of Basho
and Issu who never stood
on a 13th Century Welsh
fortress and never imagined
writing about Llywelyn
great or not nearly so.
In the rain and chill
I scribbled furiously,
retreated to the outer ward
where I was joined
by a fellow poet who
suggested that a tea
in the village would
please even old Basho.
This poem begins
with infinite
possibility
First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar
Apple Snail shell
bleached by the sun, empty
happy Snail Kite
Great Egret sitting still
waiting, simply waiting
then flying off
Red-shouldered hawk
staring into the distance
endless patience
Pig frog croaking
but the moon will not answer
we fall asleep
The dawn cedes slowly
to the impinging sunlight
birds greet the new day
The great egret lifts
her wings embracing the cloud
the winter sun smiles
on the barren branch
the red-shouldered hawk awaits
her mate and the sun
sandhill cranes wander
along the shore of the lake
looking for nothing
the moon is a cup
waiting for night to fill it
venus sits empty
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps so, but many pictures don’t travel in verbose company, and there are pictures worth far, far less, although some will search until the magic thousand are found. In Japan a story can be told in seventeen syllables, a picture painted with a single brushstroke. In the zendo the whole of dharma can be heard in the silence if you stop and listen.
Beside the still pond
dragonflies hover lightly
senbazuru dawn
The Great Egret stares
the still pond returns his stare
dawning sun laughing
Clouds swallow the moon
moorhens chanting their vespers
sleep overtakes us
A dragonfly sits
waiting for us to take wing
gravity says no
myself is no self
no self is universal
infinite being
emptiness surrounds
all forms are illusory
this is samadhi
compassion abounds
always out of your sight
until you live it
dharmas teach nothing
contain infinite knowledge
just stop looking
Gertrude Stein said
poetry is vocabulary,
or so Simic reported it,
but in that case
what do we make
of Haiku, where
a poem at maximum
can use only
seventeen words.
Perhaps, if we
follow Levi-Strauss
haiku is not poetry
but art, for all art
is reduction
and there is little
you can do
to reduce
a haiku further.
A moment
then another, another
only this one
a world of delusion
yesterday and tomorrow
Buddha says Now!
Egrets take flight
we stare awestruck
nature pities us
Now take up the pen
and write economically
lest you run out of
First published in Defenestration, Vol. XVI issue 2 August 2019
an old writer and his words 