Fawn Season in B-Town

doe and fawn

stride down the city street--

pulse of firefly light

In an earlier post,  I talked about Japanese poet Shiki's philosophy of haiku. What he termed shasei or "sketching from life." Critic and writer Lee Gurga reports that this is only the first of what Shiki considered a three part process.

  The new writer would sketch from life or as Gurga phrases it, "simply record what he or she sees,  hears, smells, tastes or touches. The goal is to develop perceptual abilities, understand how to keep thoughts and feelings from intruding, and develop the craft of translating perception into language." All  tasks that are increasingly devalued in our modern techy world.

    If you are curious about the other two stages,  Shiki also advocated for "selective realism" and "truthfulness" in haiku.  "Selective realism" means that you choose one or two of the things that you are perceiving, but pick the ones that most capture the entire experience. Gurga writes that Shiki's "Truthfulness" refers to "when a poet is able to use images from the exterior world to express his or her interior reality." These quotes are from Gurga's excellent manual Haiku: a Poet's Guide. As you can see each level gets more and more complex until the last one when the poet tries to capture in just a few words both the internal and exterior worlds.

   Regarding the doe and fawn haiku. It stems from three mama and fawn sightings that I experienced,

one during each of the last three days. The first was two nights ago just when true dark had finally arrived on our street where deer seldom appear. We live just one block from the busy traffic roar of Third Street.  I heard a rustling off to my right, and then a moment later saw two deer march down the center of the street. I wished them safe travel.

    Last night returning from a play in Greene County I came upon a threesome, a doe, a fawn, and another one--perhaps an older offspring?  Since it was late, they made no effort to hide. They moved slowly, surely across the lawns stopping to taste the shrubbery and even nibble some flowers carefully grown by someone's mailbox.

   Then this morning while biking to the Y, I saw another mama and fawn pair in someone's front yard in the neighborhood across from Kroeger's. This fawn was very young. She sidled under her mother and nursed. That's my report from deer nursery season in B-town.