Sweeping the floor, sipping my morning coffee while looking out the window, noting the moon and its phase and sheer beauty, playing with the dogs, noticing how the evening light changes as the season progresses, watching spring announce itself in blossoms and flowers, enjoy the returning warmth after an especially challenging, if beautiful winter.
These things are given to us only for a short time. If we don’t enjoy them, it’s like going to Paris but not taking in Notre Dame or walking through the Left Bank or browsing books from the booksellers along the Seine, even though you can’t read a word of French.
Like so many people of our age, I have spent too many years in my own head, thinking about the same things over and over. For several years, I have tried to turn my gaze outward, and writing haiku has helped tremendously. It makes me notice things I might otherwise rush past, lost in thought.
Here’s to distracting ourselves from our own thoughts!
Meanwhile, here are the previous week’s haiku and where they were sent.
haiku 20230403 » Questa, NM USA
sweeping the kitchen
a random shard of glass
from under the fridge
haiku 20230404 » Orlando, FL USA
april morning sun
the frost on my neighbor's roof
evaporates
haiku 20230405 » San Francisco, CA USA
blue night sky
a contrail underlines
the moon
haiku 20230406 » San Francisco, CA USA
tug of war
the dog
always wins
haiku 20230407 » Concord, CA USA
the earth tilts again
in our favor --
this golden evening
haiku 20230408 » Berkeley, CA USA
spring finally comes
to my son's house --
red camellias
haiku 20230409 » Fairlawn, OH USA
sunshine and warmth
the garden comes alive
and me with a cold
I want to send you a card
It’s kinda weird you read my Substack but don’t want a card? 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’ve bought myself and can happily recommend without mercenary motivations. You can support my work AND build up a fine haiku library!
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 Teneda (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.
Gorgeous haiku