Haiku About Moments

Matsuo Bashô said it best when he described the end result as a moment - “Aim for simplicity with elegance in expressing the haiku moment, the truth of the original noticing.”

This great Japanese poet invented the haiku as we know it - a tiny poem filled with a love of nature. He spent his life close to nature with an attitude of humility, selflessness and deep respect. He said, “Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. In doing so you must leave your preoccupation with yourself otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one - when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

Guidelines for expressing the haiku moment:

• Haiku poems consist of 5, 7, 5 syllables in three lines.
• The cutting divides the haiku in two parts with a certain imaginative distance between the two sections. Line one and two should be different images. Line three brings the two images together.
• A haiku often contains a kigo, a season word which indicates in which season the haiku is set. For example cherry blossoms indicate spring, snow winter etc. The season word isn’t always that obvious.
• Try to write a haiku only about what actually happens to you.
• Write when you have been deeply moved.
• Keep it honest, simple, clear and modest.
• Try not to explain, it should need no explanation.
• Try not to express feelings in words, let the concrete action speak for itself.

Like all poetry, these should be read slowly and out loud. Among the pleasures of poetry is the sheer physical, sensual, textural, tactile pleasure of feeling the words on your lips, tongue, teeth and vocal chords. Savour every word and every line.  Reading verse can be like eating chocolate - so much more pleasurable when you allow it slowly to melt inside of you, so much less rewarding when you snap off big chunks and bolt them whole, all but untasted. This will also allow the meaning to emerge at its own pace. Just as the reading of each poem takes time, so a relationship with the whole art of poetry itself takes time.

a contradiction

interacting with nature

getting there quickly

sunshine and showers

umshado wezinkawu

a monkey’s wedding

ponies have the right of way

walking in the road

in the new forest

his mind is now calm

yellow orange marigolds

he has walked through peace

awaiting release

wishing tears would come

it would do me good to cry

indian temple

immersed in cultural past

turban on my head 

petals silky white

you flower in my morning

sunshine in my night

storm clouds pressing down

colours push against the grey

the first drop appears

watching the sunset

with you at my side so warm

this is paradise

what is due to you

it’s not rain that makes us wet

falling from the leaves

restless wanderer

kept in line by rumble strips

safe exploration