Blue Heron Haikus

4 April 2013

Blue wings flap slowly,
great bird shadows the marsh:
spring shyly hungers.

When, if yesterday,
the blue heron returned, will 
frogs begin to sing? 

Notes

I took this picture in BC, while walking on a beach near Montague Harbour, Galiano Island, so this bird isn't an east coast Great Blue Heron. Still, it will do for illustrative purposes.

Thanks are due Marike, who noticed the first returned heron yesterday as we were walking by the marsh. She remarked how quiet and shy the birds are in the spring: "Spring is the season for mating and shyness." We had been recalling and laughing at how noisy the herons can be, particularly in the fall, when they scold us with their awful voices--GRAAAA AACK!--for stepping out of the house. But they are silent in the spring as they coast over ponds and marshes, looking for peepers and other prey. Often, too, they turn their backs to us, as if, when they cannot see us, we cannot see them. We're waiting still, and listening, for the first sign of the frogs.

Too Windy for the Birds

3 April 2013

Backlit clouds of morning blare.
Behind the huddled islands,
it's raining out to sea.

Silver spray flies
over dark and stunted trees--
too windy for the birds.

That rock in the bay looks like a boat again:
a fisherman bound home and

forever missing shore. 

Notes

I took these photos this morning, the view from inside looking out to sea, and then reflections of the clouds and water in the window, seen from the outside looking in.

I am enjoying the exercise of trying to write a (short!) poem each day.  It is a bit like labouring over a puzzle, although, for me--puzzles make me impatient--far more satisfying. For poetry is a habit of thinking, or perhaps of arranging, a way, like drawing, of resting here where I am for a time, and rendering what I see. Such rendering is never, in any medium, a simple act of description; it is always layered with memories and speculations, musing, fantasies, sorrow, bad jokes and snatches of dreams.

Find the poetry in every day: that could be an injunction to meditation or some sort of healing. For when I do this, the anxieties, the lists and preoccupations, the physical pains incurred in daily living drain away. And although I am touched by sorrow--today, meditating on several tales of ships lost at sea (the Miss Ally, for example, and the Bounty, as well as the man who drove off the ferry last week in Cape Breton; he and his car sank immediately, and then were inaccessible under the ice that drifted into the harbour)--I am also utterly joyful.  Here, in the act of making something while looking carefully at what is before me, is an acquaintance with rhythm, with precision, heart's pulse and peace.

Property

2 April 2013 

Sometimes the line
between one thing and another
is so carefully defined.

NOTES
I took both of these photos one afternoon in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They are part of a photographic project that tracks how boundaries are visually marked and patrolled.

You Can Call It Spring If You Want To

Nova Scotia 1 April 2013

March blusters,
shoves about its blocks of ice and melt and
sudden drifts of snow.

Now: mud and
seeping colour, blinding light,
rain.

Black ducks sleep at the rim of the pond.
Geese startle and

rise up honking.
Scent of earth, of
rotting kelp.

Fog wraiths
silently
through the trees, slips
cove to cove, as if by stealth.

I hear it coming:

before the stars disappear,
the Beaver Light blares.

NOTES
My photographs span the month of March on the Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia.

It's National Poetry Writing Month in the US, and I'm going to take that as an excuse to post more poems, more often. This one was, in fact, written today, no April foolin'. To join a poem-a-day challenge this month, check out this site: http://www.napowrimo.net/

And for inspiration, try this on: Ellis Avery has written a haiku a day for 14 years! She gives an account of that project, and the history of the form in a beautiful and inspiring article here: http://www.themillions.com/2013/03/21st-century-butterfly-19th-century-net-fourteen-years-in-haiku.html 

When in Another's House

1.  Let sleeping dogs lie.

2.  Resist the urge to rush to the kitchen and pour yourself a bowl of bran buds with milk.

3.  Try to keep the freezer door closed. Do not steal frozen steaks.

4.  As for the broom closet, stay out of it.

5.  Stop refolding the linens.

6.  And measuring out the laundry soap.

7.  If you must peak into cupboards, then go ahead! try on the shoes!

8.  But please ask if you wish to borrow a coat, a scarf, a tie, a pair of gloves.

9.  Try not to leave your own hair tangled in another's brush.

10. And please cease hiding shots of bourbon under the bed.
      Did you think I wouldn't find the glass?

Items Encountered in an Archive

scribbles sketches notes laundry lists love letters bills negatives pins photographs chairs heartbreak sorrow silly joy sheet music eye infection envelopes drawings paintings stitching clothespins rhymes wine stains examples of the colonial everyday the march of the zoaves money coins hate letters contracts empty notebooks reading notes glasses cigarette burns the smell of smoke lyrics instructions for new regimes of hygiene lists of names soap burma shave jingles yarn needlepoint brooches picture frames wine stains water damage evidence of mice insects ink spatters a bit of egg damnation pencils a pricked finger stop a drop of real blood

ii.
a sonatina followed by another is a sonatina played upon the ivory.
alone I mean.
tickle
me.
can tickle we
can tickle

iii.
Hinky Dinky
Parley Voo
Cheer up face
The war
Is thru

iv.
how's this for economy
how much there is for you in me

Red Boat Haiku

Thin skim of sea ice
and a red boat is still docked,
tethered to summer.


Notes
Poetry exercise. Take a picture. Then describe what you see, simply, in one short line. Make sure you place the kireji, the twist in the middle at line two; you are looking for a break in logic, the shift that alters a reader's mental picture. Complete the idea. 17 syllables: 5/7/5. Voila: Haiku.