NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 17

Sunny and rain. Another April day at the edge of New England. Lately I keep thinking – I enjoy writing haiku, writing in such a small format, trying to snag a moment or an image, but I can’t pretend to be Japanese. Perhaps this is where the idea of American Sentences comes from. I cannot write to satisfy the ancient cultural ideas of a culture that’s not my own. So, bear with me in my haiku/senryu practice.

no cherry blossoms
i am not japanese
daffodil haiku

another day
another two pink lines
more isolation

easy to stay home
a gift of the pandemic
welcome lesson

coffee and take out
chili, spicy and so hot
fragrant car ride home

In other news, I let the two young cats rummage through a laundry bag of laundered toys and balls. This amused them for quite a while and then I heard them move through the house with new jingly noises. I was surprised to find that one of their choices was this big plushy racoon. Only the head is stuffed. This was not just pulled out of the bag, but carried all the way upstairs to the bedroom!

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 17

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 17

and a Happy Haiku Day to all! A welcome rainy day here, cool enough to welcome a light sweatshirt but warm enough to relax into spring. Apologies to Bob Dylan for today’s first haiku du jour.

Hard rain gonna fall
thirsty ground unweeded
takes in every drop

When the first drops fell
everyone paused turning
toward the window

rainy days, required
the blue-gray skies setting off
yellow-green tree buds

aren’t we all looking
the solid edge to stand on
the leap rushing up.

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity. — Igor Stravinsky 1936

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 17

Day 17 NaPoWriMo 2022 – Haiku Day

I am calling it a rest day, since I was out and around and ate way too much for dinner tonight. Here are the haiku that I mushed together with minor massaging into yesterday’s sonnet:

april seventeen
easter, pesach, ramadan
but it’s haiku day!

it is haiku day
so seventeen syllables
seventeen is all

perhaps slow starting
but once you’ve got one written
they get easier

so everything comes
in the form of seventeen
five seven and five

not traditional?
an american sentence
formed of seventeen.

whatever you see
or hear or do, haiku day
distilling the world

PS it snowed today after some overnight rain, but the new plants seemed ok.

Day 17 NaPoWriMo 2022 – Haiku Day

Day 16 NaPoWriMo 2022

The NaPoWriMo prompt suggested we “write a curtal sonnet. This is a variation on the classic 14-line sonnet. The curtal sonnet form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and he used it for what is probably his most famous poem, “Pied Beauty.” A curtal sonnet has eleven lines, instead of the usual fourteen, and the last line is shorter than the ten that precede it.”

Now, I have written quite a number of sonnets, but lately it’s haiku that captures the day for me. Sometimes I’ll take some scrap of stalled poem and squeeze out what it’s about into haiku because it leaves out all the fluff and nonsense.

Having said all that, tomorrow is National Haiku Day, April seventeenth of course, and I was already thinking about how to spend tomorrow doing extra haiku in amongst all the other stuff that’s come together on a Sunday in April. I had already started some haiku on the topic of haiku day when I read the prompt and wondered if that could work. So here it is, my apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins and anyone else.

April seventeenth, two thousand and twenty-two
Easter, Pesach, Ramadan and it’s haiku day!
yearly haiku day, just seventeen syllables
seventeen is all, perhaps hard to start
but once you’ve written the first, they get easier
soon everything comes unfurling in seventeens.

Five seven and five. less traditional?
an American sentence modern seventeen
whatever you see or hear or do, Haiku Day,
distilling the world, capturing just the essence
open your ears – write!

and finally an example of why you don’t weed gardens until plants are recognizable. First spread of the several years old patch of virginia bluebells

Day 16 NaPoWriMo 2022

NaPoWriMo Day Seventeen – National Haiku Day

I was thinking about some of the things that were just setting in last year – changes at work, figuring out grocery shopping etc.

year that slipped away
isolation fell like snow
to weirding quiet

often day’s high point
lunch taken from the front steps
with the birch and birds

in the confusion
the days where much was unknown
the daily felt safe.

also had a nice moment of recalling the first two cats – here they are in 1985 photo as babies – Maggie and Bill

NaPoWriMo Day Seventeen – National Haiku Day

NaPoWriMo Day Seven

Gave myself over to doing some web-stuff today – what a time-sink that always is but still, a job done in the end. In passing, I saw a quote that I chewed on while working until this came out:

Put out your hand

If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks — Francois Rabelais

Put out your hand – palm up
a classic gesture – checking for rain
to see if the sky is falling
to see if the world is failing
to see if your hand is full of larks.

Put out your hand – gently now
while you crouch on the ground, bent
with pain or grief or anger or despair
to see what’s at your fingertips
to see if the world is still there.

and the reprise:

Open your two hands –
not to catch the falling sky
but to catch the larks.

NaPoWriMo Day Seven

NaPoWriMo 2019 – Day Seventeen

And a very happy Haiku Day!

Cool April Morning
wrapped her warm arms around me
and bade me listen.

The park: a bluebird,
romantically inclined cranes,
and three mergansers.

the impossible
yellow-green of spring’s bursting
red maple blossoms.

The first photo is a landscape seen this morning. The second was an overhead view, seen while out painting this evening.

NaPoWriMo 2019 – Day Seventeen

Haiku Day – Round Three

daffodils in spring:
they stand strong in the cool nights
and embrace warm days

the birds don’t question
their annual migration –
mysterious path

Tonight stars at last
mythology old or new
power coursing down

Haiku Day – Round Two

@realDonaldTrump •
we have to hold YOU to Truth •
not the media.
#RESIST #IMPEACH #Haikuday #NaPoWriMo #haiku

@realDonaldTrump
your lies are so thick and sad
they rate a haiku

@realdonaldtrump:
a kind universe has made
you five syllables.

NaPoWriMo Day Seventeen Haiku Day

Happy International Haiku Day!

Determined flying
Beaks slice frothy morning clouds
Springward northward bound

Faceted glinting
Restless metamorphosis
Springs up, vanishes. 

Out of night’s quiet
And still, sleepy murmuring 
The first bird’s clear note.