down the path
this misty summer morning
silent hooves
The above little ditty is one of the results of my having a bit of fun lately with the haiku genre. It refers to an actual early morning encounter with a doe on a narrow trail in the Great Smoky Mountains in which we actually had to squeeze by each other. You’ll note, if you instinctively count haiku syllables, that it’s 3 - 7 - 3. A true haiku is commonly thought to be a 5 - 7 - 5 structure. Without belaboring the point, this actually refers to Japanese sound units (morae) which are shorter than english syllables. A 3 - 5 - 3 structure in english would be phonetically closer to a true japanese haiku.
I’ve thrown in the word summer, thus meeting another previous requirement, that of the use of a seasonal word to place the poem in it’s natural context. I say previously because the haiku powers that be (sort of like the French Academy) have ruled that westerners no longer have to use seasonal words in their attempts to write haiku. Our cultures are just too different.
On my current reading list, and in my Amazon cart, is the book Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, by Haruo Shirane. If some of the more pessimistic scenarios for climate change come to fruition, what becomes of Japanese haiku when the traditional seasons are out of whack? For that matter, if we have truly reached the end of nature ( apologies to Bill for vastly oversimplifying his earlier work ) haiku will refer to something no longer available to our experience.
I am led to recall Voltaire’s Candide, written as a scathing philosophical satire in response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Japanese literature has a satirical form of poetry called senryu. The farce of being a species that befouls it’s own nest, and being too stupid to keep our planetary home viable, is surely a suitable topic for this sort of barroom humor. I’ll just leave you with a slightly more tasteful trash senryu.
by the poolside
small pieces of orange rind
leftover sunrise