orders of magnitude
oak saplings among
the lettuce
acute angles
the sun glares at
the swimmer’s white legs
set theory
crows mob in
bare branches
long division
hearts pasted on
a frosty window
orders of magnitude
oak saplings among
the lettuce
acute angles
the sun glares at
the swimmer’s white legs
set theory
crows mob in
bare branches
long division
hearts pasted on
a frosty window
Eager to procrastinate this morning (this is actually most of what I do every day), I said to myself, “Self,” I said, “I bet Thoreau is full of haiku.” So I pulled Walden off the bookshelf and started looking through it and giggling. (Yes, I know: I’m easily entertained.)
I did have to use some ellipsis to get haiku out of some of Thoreau’s meaty utterances (when you’ve been reading predominantly haiku even Thoreau’s vigorous prose seems a little Victorianly verbose), but in the end I was really happy with these. I stopped looking when I got to the last one, in fact, because it was so perfect I became too happy to sit still anymore and had to get up and go for a walk. It is equal parts Thoreau-ish and haiku-ish, and also is a nice counterpart to the first one below, which was actually the first one I found.
*
gentle rain …
waters my beans …
keeps me in my house today
where a forest was cut down
last winter
another is springing up
hollow and
lichen-covered apple trees
gnawed by rabbits
the house … behind
a dense grove of red maples …
I heard the house-dog bark
the wood thrush
sang around and was heard
from shore to shore
faint hum of a mosquito …
invisible … tour …
at earliest dawn
while I drink I see
the sandy bottom …
how shallow it is
my beans ….
impatient to be hoed…
so many more than I wanted
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden