Tag: haiku

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ragged claws

On a day of incomparable beauty the past wells up within me and I am grateful for the kindness of shadows. The sun is bright but not hot; it feels like autumn. An indigo bunting lets spill its usual headlong song, but this late in the season and up in the woods, most likely it’s already on the move.

using the phone
as a mirror — how little
sky it holds

*

where the oak split off from its lost half open mouthed

***

Re-reading Prufrock, as one does. The line “There will be time, there will be time” catches me right in the feels. Also “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” is excellent. The whole poem strikes just the right balance between repetition and surprise. Still fun on the tongue. Five stars, would read again.

***

The literature is riddled with absences.
David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything

***

The difference between what you tell yourself about what you’re doing and your true motivations can be a fruitful place to explore, but too much self knowledge isn’t always advantageous. Lying to myself about my true motivations was absolutely key to quitting tobacco back when I was in my mid 30s, for example. I didn’t admit to myself that I’d actually quit for years.

moon-eyed—
one cloud
at a time

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Insurgent, portentative

I’m walking past ranks of even-aged red pines with a native broadleaf forest rising in the understory to a height of some thirty feet now: a visually striking natural insurgency against the industrial monoculture. Molting birds skulk through the dense foliage while a hermit thrush still sings just up the hill. A very small brown and white feather floats down.

*

If i didn’t know that these mushrooms were poisonous, would I still find them repulsive? Yeah, probably. The death angel looks delicious — which apparently it is. Then it dissolves your liver.

*

One of those days when even the rocks sweat and the biting insects form clouds dense enough to block the sun, and here I am circling a bog. My addiction to walking is beginning to seem nearly pathological, even to myself. But here’s the thing: I’m having a blast.

Oh what a lovely breeze!

Say, are those storm clouds?

hemlock sapling
bound in red surveyor’s tape
how hot it is

*

Why would I slog through a buggy bog, you ask? That’s where the prettiest mud is.

***

Portentative

sky face says meh
to the white noise

of our anti
bodies of work

squeezing whole lives
into a few hours before sleep

while six-legged leaves
chant half the night

sky face acquires
a round cloud mouth

the moonlight denies
ever knowing the moon

the lives we’re missing bloat like corpses
as species dwindle

sky face is just the void
with better branding

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Dry, high

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

dry high
the crisp new air
filling my lungs

*

Haiku says start with what’s in front of you in the real world, however you define that. Of course haiku are born of the literary imagination like any other poetry, but they tend not to be found by staring at the blank page or screen. They’re small enough for all but the most memory-challenged people to carry in their heads, so they’re best when composed in the head. That’s why haiku as a practice goes so well with walking.

I have a very strong feeling I’ve said all this before. It’s got that pre-masticated texture…

dust hanging
above the gravel road
leaves gone gray

***

It’s a spectacular evening in Plummer’s Hollow. The katydids are doing their contrapuntal thing against a background of tree crickets and field crickets of all kinds. This is one of my favourite natural soundscapes in the world; something that truly makes living here special. Having spent time in urban and suburban areas that lack this, I know not to take it for granted. I’m in such a good mood, I deleted half my haiku output from this morning.

There’s certainly a frisson of pleasure in uncreating bad poems. But it’s nothing like the sheer joy of knowing—or at least strongly suspecting—that you’ve just written something true and original and quite possibly even good. That’s like a hit you keep going back for.

***

warm wind coming from
where the crescent moon
wearing a very small halo
sinks into a bed of trees

a screech owl quavers
down the scale three times
and trills in concert with the insects
their intricate variations
on a theme of throb

in the dark bulk of the barn
some small thing stirs
makes a clatter and all the hair
on the back of my neck
stands at attention

a meteor draws a brief line
under Cassiopeia
my bare arms are somehow
irresistible to moths
tube-tongues palpating my skin
in the darkness
a sensation i’ll remember
on my death bed

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Trickle of a creek

I looked up from digging potatoes this morning and saw this:

rising sun shining on raindrops beaded on a wire fence, with one pole bean tendril looping up

The world can really take your breath away sometimes.

***

I’ve been picking a lot of berries lately, including two trips to a highbush blueberry bog, regular pickings of the blackberries in our old fields, and fistfuls of trailside lowbush blueberries and huckleberries on the ridgetop. There’s a strange intimacy to the act of picking berries, which I tried to bring out in a short series of haiku. (See Woodrat Photohaiku for the accompanying photos.)

*

swamp forest
hugging the bucket
of blueberries

*

blackberry patch
the secret beds
made by deer

*

blueberry woods
a five-legged beetle
takes to the air

*

snagged by thorns
the closeness required
to get free

***

The tiny ants that eat ripe blueberries and the tiny spiders that pray upon them might make a good haiku in more skilled hands than mine. Or even by me on another day. For now, it’s the one that got away. (It was this short, honest!)

*

spiderantiberry

*

crowzaic

***

chance of light
rain in the next hour
glass house

***

The one that doesn’t look like the others: treasured or thought lucky in some cultures, hated and feared in others. It’s all so arbitrary.

***

the
asp
i
ration
bites
me
back

***

“You went for a walk in the rain?”

I never quite know how to answer these questions. But how about this: Any walk is better than no walk, and I own a sturdy umbrella. And since the umbrella keeps off midges and mosquitoes better than anything else, in many ways a walk down the hollow on a humid evening is far more relaxing in the rain.

***

sun atop
the tall tulip polar
trickle of a creek

***

where is the bear?
the bear is any
where a bear can
bear to be
which is every
where you ain’t

***

A well-done parody is also an homage.

The reverse may also be true: an homage that goes all in can become indistinguishable from parody.

***

8:35 PM. Just went to retrieve my cap and put my hand on a Carolina wren already settled in to roost. The alarm was mutual.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Knifeless knife

hot summer night
itching even where
nothing itches

***

wind from the west the sound of metal striking metal

***

I found a knife in the woods. Or more accurately, I found an old, tooled leather sheath for a knife with the remains of a hilt sticking out of it.

The top of the hilt was the only thing visible; the knife had been stuck into the ground, wedged between a couple of rocks. The way you’d hide something if you meant to come back for it later: inconspicuous, but not completely invisible. It’s on the far side (from us, toward the valley) of the higher ridge, near a stand of old sassafras trees where I sometimes dig sassafras roots, so it’s tempting to think the knife had something to do with that. But more likely it was used by someone poaching deer.

I love how fungal it is, already half-transformed back into earth. I returned it to its hiding place so the process can continue.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Midday heat

midday heat
the slow downward spiral
of a leaf

*

black butterfly
wings still damp
from the tomb

*

cooling breeze
the black-throated green warbler’s
other song

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Five haiku


watch on Vimeo

harvestman
eight ways to go
from one leaf

coiling
and recoiling
garter snake

box turtle
dignified despite the mushroom
on his chin

*

far pasture
the slow rearrangement
of cows

watering hole
the sky’s reflection in each
deep hoof print

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Epizoochory

spiderweb
on my glasses
name that tune

***

Animals can disperse plant seeds in several ways, all named zoochory. Seeds can be transported on the outside of vertebrate animals (mostly mammals), a process known as epizoochory.
Wikipedia

lost dog
enchanter’s nightshade burs
in its ears

tick-trefoil reversing
in mid-air

white spears
of black cohosh
an insomniac firefly

waterfall that only sings
when the stream’s a trickle

children’s cries
the holiday sky empty
but for a vulture

an old quarry road
where deer bed down

snarl
of a bobcat
traffic whine

a wood pewee’s beak
snapping on a moth

gnarled oaks
the sky never runs out
of lightning

fresh bear markings
on the power pole

waist-high ferns
dancing in the wind
such release

(See illustrated version of this linked-verse sequence at Woodrat photohaiku)

***

When my brothers and I were kids, on the 4th of July we got to run around with sparklers until the box was empty and then collapse on the lawn and watch fireflies. That’s genius-level parenting, I now recognize.

Sometimes Dad drove us all up to the top of the field so we could watch Penn State fireworks 25 miles away, following a late picnic supper. Sure, we needed binoculars to really appreciate them, but it was “so much better without all the people!” Mom would exclaim. And it was, I suppose.

I still like nothing better than sitting out in the meadow watching the firefly show, and on the Fourth, there’s a soundtrack. At the moment, that includes sirens. The family of barred owls starts making monkey sounds up on the ridge. The barrage continues.