Haiku Like Poetry

Most of us learned in school that Haiku is a Japanese poetic form constructed of seventeen syllables in three lines.  Many of us have marveled at the way such poems can capture a great sweep of meaning in very few words.  It turns out that strictly traditional Japanese haiku are not seventeen syllables long but rather seventeen “on” and “on” are not exactly the same as syllables.  There are other rules to traditional haiku as well.

I’m sure I’ve never written a poem that Is a haiku in the strict sense.  I don’t even know for sure if it’s really possible in English.  But I’m fond of poems that are what I would call “haiku like”; short poems that juxtapose two ideas in a way that creates a new insight beyond either of the two ideas

At a church retreat some years ago I was guided to an exercise of walking in a garden (it was a lovely spring day) and finding some image that could be touched with a haiku like poem.  I was struck by a tree branch that was rugged, touch seeming, but sprouting new growth that was green and tender.

old wood creaks brittle

memory supports the

tender flame of liquid green

The poem captures for me the interesting contrast between the old, hard, brittle wood and the tender, almost liquid fresh spring growth.  And of course it suggests that the difference could be seen as one of memory, of experience.

I’ve written a few other poems lately that are haiku like to my mind.  They don’t always juxtapose two ideas, but they all seek to capture an insight, an intuitive seeing into things, in a few words and images.

Stone on stone rest

Where water forgot

Stream bank remembers

Rushing water

Laughs downhill

Heedless of knowing

Due bends the grass

Water seeking earth

Water resisting

Breathless glance

Treasure precious

Everybody wants to love

Trees whisper

Swishing streams reply

Motion is stillness

Crickets sing the

First star twinkling

Magic of the night

Soft breeze whisper

Twilight sigh

Sky slips into evening dreaming

Blue throated song bird floats

Between the worlds and so

The worlds are one

May we all be blessed

Devotional Poetry

When I started writing regularly I was delighted to find that some of the poetry had a devotional quality and was useful in personal worship and meditation.

This one celebrates my joy and gratitude for the peace and fullness that I’ve connected with through the practice of vipassana meditation:

How grateful am I to you

    Oh light filled void !

How pure, fine, and full the touch of breath

    Deep

        Deepening

            Moving

                Still

I am a happy fool

This one celebrates my spirit friend, Hummingbird:

Take me delight

For I’m bloodied by the struggle

And I need an easy breath and laughing song

Hummingbird’s garden

Is the place of healing breezes

And the warm wet easy beating of my heart

My love, my light

My bold and gentle teacher

And my healer who’s prescription’s always Joy

Take me delight

For I’m whole when we embrace

And my path is one with heart when we are one

I wrote a series of poems inspired by the of the significance of the spectral colors in celtic shamanism.  Two of them work for me as votive pieces:

Yellow

Bright banners fly in the yellow Sun

Sing glory of the bright Sun dawning

Glorious Self abroad earth walking the

Journey of the Soul

Yellow eyes of panther stalking

Owl eyes spinning, turning, swirling

Deepening trance and piercing gaze

Companion of the Soul

Golden yellow?

Shiny metal pales before the

Yellow quickening, risk taking

Power outpouring, joy exuding

Servant of the Soul

White

Let there be White

Pure White busting

Forth from White outpouring

White

No prism dividing one thing from

Another all thought one thought the

Thought of All

She speaks pure White

Eternally and Her

Moment did not begin

And does not end

This one is a rondeau relating to a story that I wrote some years ago about a mythological ancestor of primates, Priman in the Long Ago:

Grandmother Moon danced in the trees

Sang softly in the whispering breeze

Where Priman lay by water still

And drank the heart song to his fill

And dreamed a destiny to seize

Suffusing wisdom soul’s increase

A gift of wholeness and of peace

Waxing light expectant thrill

Grandmother Moon

When Priman sought his heart’s release

Lay down his burdens, worries cease

She walked the water clear and still

And by her love his peace fulfilled

Release and healing gift of peace

Grandmother Moon

Any poem that ends “I am Light” is devotional for me in some sense:

Wake groggy yet the

Vision cuts like a

Diamond blade slicing the

Jewel glistening green in the

Void glowing with light

Luminous with light

True Light from True Light

I am Light

Another celebrating my spirit friend, Hummingbird:

Iridescent Hummingbird

Hover round your tiny nest

And dart among the willows and

The cattails growing thick

In blood warm water

Safe amid warm summer days

That never end and ever see

Deep moonlight streaming through

The summer night with

Vines and blossoms growing

Thumping of the drumbeat finds you

Starlight calls your name

Dreamer sees your vision shimmer

Vision seekers come to see

And sing, “Iridescent Hummingbird!”

May we all be blessed

In the Moment

Sometimes a poem I write is an attempt to capture what’s happening in me at the moment.

Antsy in my skin so it’s

Skin shedding time

Listless and done in so it’s
Skin shedding time

A lot of footsteps trod and

My feet can’t feel the sod and
I’ve a little tinny god so it’s
Skin shedding time

I come to the place that poem is about periodically.   My consciously held formula for doing life no longer quite works.  Whatever I’m focusing on or how I’m going about it isn’t serving my totality as well as it had been.  I’m called to follow a larger vision, or a different strategy.  The first I consciously know about it is when I feel restless, antsy.  I can ignore it for a while, but that’s a waste of time, and of joy.  The poem captures the feeling, the signal that it’s time to let go of the old skin and live in a larger one.

Bleary eyed from a week of working

Satisfied with what’s been done
Sink into the couch and dream
Of paths to walk and days to come

This one reminds me of a Credence song found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeJuUqDqY00. It’s wonderful to feel tired from satisfying work and just sink into a dreamy place.

May we all be blessed

Writing in Verse Forms

I’ve been writing in verse forms involving metered lines and end rhyme a good bit.

When I started daily writing at the beginning of the year I expected to write free verse poetry mostly.  I wanted to connect with my inner self through writing and I had no reason to write in verse forms with metered lines and end rhyme (or any rhyme).  I had set myself a task of finding a poem I liked every evening and then writing a poem (not necessarily related or similar to the one I liked).  My intent was to establish a daily habit of reading and writing.

One night I searched for and found a poem called Daddy Fell Into the Pond that I remembered liking as a kid.  It can be found here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daddy-fell-into-the-pond/.  Having sorted out that the author is Alfred Noyes I googled Noyes and found what is probably considered his masterpiece, The Highwayman, found here: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html. He writes in a verse form with metered lines and end rhyme.  I thought I’d play around with that and this was the result:

Two moonbeams came bouncing and glistening

Off of the shiny wood floor

They slipped through the louvers

Then straight on maneuvered

To the cat near the foyer door

“What ho” said the cat “are you stalking?”

“Then I will go stalking too

For the sky it is wide

And it’s my cat’s pride

To go prowling the night with the moon”

So the cat he ascended a moonbeam

His little feet silently crept

Round the shimmering sky

He was ever so sly

And he never did falter a step

And he gazed at the cities of angels

And he roamed through the lands of the elves

And he spoke to the dreams

Of the silvery moon beams

And he had a fine time for himself!

The morning of course found him napping

All curled in a tight little ball

For though sunlight is fine

A cat’s sense of time

Is a mystery pondered by all

The cat as a character and the shape of the story emerged in my mind unexpectedly.  I could feel some part of my mind filling out the narrative and another part searching for language to fulfill the verse form.  I was in the middle taking dictation.  When it was done I felt refreshed, and I knew that the task of writing in a verse form had connected me with something creative in myself.

I learned from the experience that for me there’s a payoff to writing in verse forms, so I’ve done more of it.

Here’s an example of a rondeau (John McCrae’s famous rondeau, In Flanders Fields, can be found here: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm):

Between the worlds and restless dreams

Where shadows dance and moonlight streams

A spider waits on stealthy web

And feels the trembling of each thread

And coming is and going seems

As moonlight glints off swirling streams

Trees whisper, sighing in their dreams

Expectancy, or is it dread?

Between the worlds

The breeze demanding what it means

The spider skitters soft unseen

Across the taught and trembling web

Vibrations dance as mass is shed

A shadow slipstreams through the screen

Between the worlds

“Between the worlds”  seemed like an interesting phrase to repeat and one that could either begin or end a thought, and so a good basis for a rondeau.  I love moonlight in the woods at night and wanted a poem that would capture the feeling of being in the woods in moonlight with a stream flowing nearby.  The spider, expectancy/dread, something transiting between worlds,  all came to mind as I engaged the process of writing in a verse form.

And finally, here’s an example of a villanelle (Theodore Roethke’s The Waking, maybe my favorite poem all time, which is in this form, can be found here: http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/104.html):

Tormented trudging up the sacred hill

To find a peace within we journey far

The sacred swirling dance becoming still

Intending resurrection be fulfilled

We struggle toward the slowly rising star

Tormented trudging up the sacred hill

Impelled beyond all reason by the thrill

Of expectation, guessing what we are

The sacred swirling dance becoming still

What cup of sorrow must be ours to fill

By what deep guilt this dreaded quest is ours

Tormented trudging up the sacred hill

Our vows we’ve taken, broken, fought with will

And torn our flesh, yet proudly bore the scares

The sacred swirling dance becoming still

By struggle sacred cups of blood we’ve filled

And broke our bodies, sharing what we are

Tormented trudging up the sacred hill

The sacred swirling dance becoming still

I love religious imagery, and writing this helped me to connect with it.