Beginnings

Dawn in the Badlands, June 2011


If I were clever, I would do this in haiku, introduce myself I mean. But soon it would veer into 5-7-5 prose, short, syllabically correct but not alive with the real spirit of haiku. And what is the real spirit of haiku? That's precisely what this year is about--the process of discovering this centuries' old art. The how and why of haiku. I already know the when. At least intellectually. The when is now, this moment. This year's journey is learning how to meet and capture the moment. (This sounds so western, perhaps, better to learn to be in the moment, or to be this moment.)

Why you might ask does my haiku year begin on July 1? Because that's when the fiscal year begins. I applied for an Indiana Arts Commission grant to attend the biennial Haiku North America Conference that will be held in Seattle in August. And they awarded me an arts grants to study this short, simple-seeming poetic form. Its simplicity I already recognize to be pure fantasy. What could be more complex, harder than to capture than the world in less than 20 syllables?

In any case I am very grateful to the Indiana Arts Commission for this wonderful opportunity.

I can't remember when I wrote my first haiku, college, most likely, perhaps even high school though when I was growing up in the 60s, it wasn't a particularly popular form. It was considered exotic, something from foreign shores. Not popular the way it is now.

I do remember the first time I kept a haiku journal, in 1980, a rainy year in Juneau Alaska, just after my son was born. Mornings, I would look out my bedroom window at Mount Juneau almost always shrouded in grey mist. A view that looked very Japanese, a Fuji-like scene. That is if you could see Mt. Juneau at all through the rain. That year I think more than half of my haiku centered on rain or mist or snow.

So now I'm not in the Badlands despite the accompanying photograph. That was four weeks ago. That dawn moment is long past, like all moments, experiential, sensual, fleeting then gone. No. I'm in Bloomington, Indiana listening to the year's first firecrackers blasting off a few days shy of our nation's birthday.

first of july
whiz and boom of firecrackers--
silence of fireflies