A few months ago, as readers of this Substack will remember, my home in Grass Valley, California, was buried under three feet of snow. Much more than that fell, but that was about the maximum depth I could measure at any given moment. You looked out and it was so white, it hurt your eyes.
That same backyard — nay, garden! — is now one set of blooming flowers and blossoms after another. The bluebells came, then the dogwoods, and more keep coming, as if they are taking turns, tag-teaming us with beauty.
The thing is, we didn’t plant any of these.
The previous owners left us this surprise. I wish I could thank them because we are endlessly delighted by this incessant display of life and fecundity and beauty. The bees seem to enjoy them as well, and we’re thinking about becoming beekeepers in 2024. We’ll see.
This makes me think of all the things in our world that we take for granted, things that were built or planted by those who came before us and are already gone. Alan Watts, quoting a source I can’t recall, once spoke about how we are born out of this made world, and in turn leave behind that which we have made. When I lived in San Francisco, I often wondered about the people who had lived out their individual dramas in the same apartments I was also living out my own.
I know it ain’t much, but I hope some of these frail, paper haiku postcards surprise and delight someone in the future, going through their parents’ or grandparents’ old boxes, or unearthed by future archaeologists. I hope these temporary musings of uniques moments somehow endure longer than my talent merits.
Anyway, here are last week’s seven haiku and where I mailed them to.
haiku 20230515 » San Francisco, CA USA
crystal blue morning
the perfect moment
for hanging laundry
haiku 20230516 » Durham, NC USA
reading a friend's
poetry manuscript
the weight of each page
haiku 20230517 » Kingston, NY USA
cedar ridge morning
I help my son
put up a fence
haiku 20230518 » Vancouver, BC CANADA
recycling center
I vow to use less
anyway
haiku 20230519 » Durham, NC USA
my dogs sniffs
at a random feather
evening walk
haiku 20230520 » Vacaville, CA USA
self checkout
the robot barks orders
and I obey
haiku 20230521 » Castro Valley, CA USA
post-pandemic
grocery shopping
I take the wrong cart
That’s all seven! See you next week! And remember…
I want to send you a card
It’s kinda weird you read my Substack but haven’t requested a card yet. I don’t get it. Please ask! It’s free. I ask nothing in return, aside from your good graces or maybe a cup of coffee.
Buy haiku books
Yes, I do get a small commission if you buy these through my Amazon links, but these are books I would happily recommend without mercenary motivations. You can support my work and build up a fine haiku library!
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.
Use the link in the post! I'd love to send you one.
I’d happily receive a postcard :)