Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

Over the ringing in my ears, an edgy inner voice replied: You
know how you got here from there (when you took those first
steps into haiku land), and the milestones along the way. And
it hasn’t been a few years, it’s been about fifteen years since
you received that first acceptance note. Remember your online
school in the early… by the way, how long have you been
an associate editor for The Heron’s Nest?
Oh. Fugit irreparabile tempus.
* * *
Really, do you think
We would dare to harm your eggs,
Brave hissing grey goose?
And what haiku poet’s oeuvre would be complete without her
very own last leaf?
Two stubborn leaves defy
Beckoning autumn gales . . .
One is left behind
After finding the Shiki site, I began churning out what I believed
were haiku and posting them to the list with requests for feedback.
I came to understand that a surfeit of capital letters and
rampant punctuation were not requisite. Though at some point
I realized that neither was a 5/7/5 syllable count demanded by
a haiku deity, by then it had become an unbreakable habit, automatically
kicking in whenever I put words together in haiku
format. I counted in private and in public, in my head, whispered
or silently, on my fingers, tapping a fork, spoon, breadstick,
pencil, or toe. I could not finish a poem without counting.
finding the answer wind-faded tracks
in the sea’s timeless beat . . . sea gull, sandpiper, shore crab
almost jeep
In addition to the haiku happening all around every day, a lifetime
of haiku were inside me, waiting for expression. I penned
hundreds of hopefuls, a thousand and more, in the course of
a year. I ate, drank, slept, worked, played, and spoke haiku,
though what I wrote was often not…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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