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
gardening
Found haiku: Thoreau
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
Red Dragonfly 