bird calls
asking myself
what it all means
.
bird calls
checking my answers
against yours
asking
November 28: It’s not frozen yet …
… but it will be soon. Oh yes it will.
________________________
when the lake
freezes over
ask me again
willows leaning
over the ice
undecided
your voice from shore
more and more cracks
in the ice
August 11: 1-7: Roy G. Biv
1. a red wheelbarrow this time there’s no significance
2. that last shriveled orange those last two drops of juice
3. he never trusted yellow until he tasted lemonade
4. asking for green and being given an uncertain shade of blue
5. there will always be more blue than anything else
6. the indigo pods that shake in the autumn wind beetles dying
7. trying to revive her the child holds violets to her nose
July 9: 1-3: One-liners
1.
waiting for someone to speak first the moon deflates
2.
ankle deep the conversation turns to drowning
3.
the sting of raspberry brambles ask me again
June 11: A story in eleven haiku and one photograph
Through the screenless window comes
a bird.
I watch it disport itself.
The house fills with wings.
The hearts of birds beat
more rapidly than our own.
I inquire of Google
what to do.
The response is dissatisfying.
The Russian story of
the Firebird.
A keen, glittering eye.
Many versions
of roast chicken.
I choose the most savory.
Dancing, I lift up my skirts
for the bird to pass
under.
The oven is still hot.
I stand beside it,
flapping my arms.
I don’t dream anymore
I can fly.
I have scraped my mind of such stuff.
I trap the bird in the closet.
When you get home,
it will amaze you.
I am reciting famous poetry
silently.
I am petting the cats.
The cats are hot, they breathe
rapidly. Wait, I say,
you will be rewarded.
*
I was feeling a little claustrophobic yesterday. Haiku seemed too small. Even the most wonderful of them — just a blink! I had a novel-lover’s need for extended narrative.
But I do love the haiku form and the challenge of containing an entire experience, a full impression, in just a few syllables. Several things I’ve been thinking about lately began to come together in my mind, things I’m hoping to write more about in the next few days — gendai haiku, renga. Unconventional ways of writing haiku, and ways of linking them together to create a larger picture than a single haiku allows.
I wondered what would happen if you piled a bunch of nontraditional haiku on top of each other to form a narrative. I wanted each haiku to be able to make sense separately on its own, and also to form a part of a coherent story. This photograph I’ve been thinking about for a few days entered the mix; a bird began to fly around in my head.
Writing this was a lot of fun. I’ve begun a couple other similar narratives, and I want to try more. This kind of structure seems to work the way my mind works — I’m really only capable of brief bursts of attention, but I also hunger for depth of character, for details of setting, for continuity of action.
(A bird really did get into our house through a screenless window a few years ago; but the rest of this is fantasy. In case you were worried about its fate at the paws of the cats.)
