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.
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
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.
listen carefully
to the sound of the great bell
before being struck
cat stares at Buddha
pigeons flock to ignore him
people see nothing
there is no city
inside the large gate, only
Buddha and pigeons
The Japanese invented
haiku certain that a painting
of great beauty could
be completed with only
a few strokes of the brush.
The Japanese have no word
for what we claim is higher
order poetry, academic and
pedantic are two other English
words which easily apply.
And the Japanese are hard put
to comprehend so much of what
we deem experimental, the result,
a friend named Yoshi said,
of what seems the odd scraps
of a dictionary torn apart
by an unexpected tornado.
In Tokyo every tree knows
that at least four
poems lie within it, each
awaiting the appropriate
season.
I picked up a book
off the shelf this morning
one hundred haiku
it was like sitting down
a word starved man, tired
of searching for an always
denied sustenance, and here
laid out before me, a repast
of the sweetest grapes,
bits of sugar caressing
a tongue grown used
to the often bitterness
of ill-considered prose.
As midday approached
I knew that this was a meal
to which I’d return.
The small house fly has
no arachnophobia
only once in life.
In the Norway Spruce
pine cones threaten to descend.
Squirrels sit waiting.
In the sunlit park
the small dog watches the man
go fetch the thrown ball
Maple leaves emerge
almost certain that winter
is now history
A rain of petals
cherry snow covers the ground
we await the fruit.
https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019
If Basho were here today,
in this America, at this time,
stop briefly and consider what
he might write, how he would
describe the faces of parents
mourning children gunned down
in random urban violence,
the asylum seeker, praying
at the border for entry, for hope,
the homeless woman curled
in a ball in her cardboard home
in an alley no one visits, no one
sees even in the full light of day,
the school children practicing
active shooter drills, while
learning to recite the alphabet.
sitting zazen, I
see one thousand cranes crying.
Their river bathes me.
the dangling green orbs
hang beneath the verdant leaves
dreaming of summer.
sweat rolls down my back
the noon sun stares angrily
forgotten winter
evening sky darkens
is it the approach of night
or simple summer rain?
listen carefully
to the sound of the great bell
before being struck
cat stares at Buddha
pigeons flock to ignore him
people see nothing
there is no city
inside the large gate, only
Buddha and pigeons
an old writer and his words 