Summer in the foothills is perfectly lovely. As hot as it gets, it’s never Central Valley hot, in fact several degrees cooler, and just as dry. In the evenings, cool air comes down from the Sierra, or I surmise because it can get downright chilly even after the hottest of days.
We’ve taken to walking our dog after dinner, often catching the sunset from the high vantage point of Morgan Ranch, the part of Grass Valley we call home.
It’s important to really enjoy these moments. A few months ago, I was trudging through snow, begging my dog to do his business before we both succumbed to the elements. These perfectly temperate, purple evenings are numbered. (In San Francisco, out by the ocean, the winter evenings weren’t so different from summer evenings, at least when the fog was in.)
Here’s to the fleeting nature of beauty and youth and winter and summer!
And here are last week’s haiku, and where I mailed them.
haiku 20230703 » White Rock, BC Canada
three crows on a branch
watching my dog play
sun dappled morning
haiku 20230704 » Sacramento, CA USA
distant fireworks
we see them
before we hear them
haiku 20230705 » Fair Oaks, CA USA
starry night
a mosquito
buzzes my ear
haiku 20230706 » Port Ludlow, WA USA
eighty-three years old
our neighbor can still gossip
like the best of them
haiku 20230707 » Bahama, NC USA
purple evening
we surprise a doe
pruning our cherry tree
haiku 20230708 » Dayton, OH USA
july morning
the cat runs outside
to roll in the dirt
haiku 20230709 » Taylorville, IL USA
we sort and weigh
the blessings of summer
ripe peaches
That’s all seven! See you next week! And remember…
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Buy haiku books
I heartily recommend all the books below. I get no commission, no nothing if you buy through my links. (Amazon Associates gave me the boot because I didn’t move enough merchandise. Oh well.)
The Haiku Anthology (Third Edition), Edited by Cor van den Heuvel
Want to know what modern English-language haiku really looks like? What it is capable of? Here is your answer, and a must for every haiku poet’s bookshelf. When I first started writing haiku, this volume served me very well. Many of the haiku within have remained with me throughout the years, and I have been privileged to now count some of the contributors as colleagues and friends. Buy it here.
Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, Natalie Goldberg
Many writers will immediately recognize Goldberg from her forever bestselling Writing Down the Bones. As it happens, she has been writing haiku for her entire adult life, and has much to teach us. In Three Simple Lines, she intertwines memoir, history, and travelogue in a magnificent way as she journeys through Japan, chasing down the ghosts of Bashō and Buson, among others. She also draws much needed attention to women haiku poets, who were too often overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Buy it here.
Mountain Tasting - Haiku and Journals of Santoka … (tr. John Stevens)
I found Santoka challenging at first. Much of his haiku feels incomplete to me or dashed off. But he grew on me. Soon I felt like a companion on his journey, bouncing from inn to inn, begging for alms by day, pounding the sake at night. Buy it here.
The Essential Haiku - Versions of Bashō, Buson, & Issa
Essential is right! Edited by Robert Hass, a great poet in his own right. Hass includes great essays on the history and evolution, as well as other writings by the poets themselves. A true master class in haiku! Buy it here.
Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, Matsuo Bashō (tr. Sam Hamill)
Haiku poets have a tradition of wandering the countryside, and Bashō set the example! Buy it here.
Selected Poems, Masaoka Shiki (tr. Burton Watson)
I wrote a whole post about Shiki. Haiku might not exist today without his influence and renewal of the form. Buy it here.
Issa's Best: A Translator's Selection of Master Haiku, Issa Kobayashi (tr. David G. Lanoue)
Issa is probably the most beloved of the classic poets. His humility and joy in the face of unbearable loss and poverty endear him to haiku lovers everywhere. Lanoue seems to have made translating Issa his life’s work, and I love his versions. Buy it here.