Ghost Range, Abiquiu, New Mexico

 


   
    on Kitchen Mesa
    hiker breathes his last--
    butterfly rises








There's a story behind this haiku. It concerns a man named Ted, who hiked his last mountain last Thursday at Ghost Ranch, the lovely  country where Georgia O'Keeffe painted.

I happened to be hiking the same trail that day, and it was a steep uphill climb to Kitchen Mesa where there were spectacular views.

When I reached the top, a wide table-top with cliffs offering viewpoints in all directions, a white-haired man was walking about 70 yards away. His friend was sitting and I heard the sitting man ask the other, "Are you OK?" The tall man's answer was lost to the wind.

I wandered on the white paths on the top checking out the spectacular views and headed back on the path where the two men were. Now the tall one was lying across the path. "Is something wrong?" I asked. The sitting man said, "My friend's having chest pains. Can you go for help? A burro, whatever."

I gave them my water and a snack because I did not know how long it would take for help to arrive. The man needing aid was named Ted and his friend, Bill.

I raced down as fast as I could (especially over the rocky, steep sections), ran where the path was sandy, and kept hoping some fleet young'un would approach so I could send him or her back to the ranch. Only an older couple approached.  I told them what was going on and asked them to hurry to the top.

At the bottom, I found a sheriff at the edge of the ranch. He drove me to the office and they called 911 for a helicopter rescue.

Alas, the man did not make it. Later, I saw the couple that I had passed racing down.  They told me Ted had died 10 or 15 minutes before they got there--in other words shortly after I had left. The woman said, "Don't worry. He died doing what he loved in the most beautiful place."

Ted's daughter was at Ghost Ranch as well, painting in the field, and she later told the coroner that she did not want his body shipped home, but instead wanted him cremated so they could release his ashes on the top of Kitchen Mesa.

You never know what you will witness in the course of a day. The occasion was both sad and life-affirming.

Rad Haiku

I have no haiku to post today, but I wanted to talk some about gendai haiku. In Japanese gendai means modern. In fact, contemporary Japanese haiku is less tradition-bound and more innovative than Amercan haiku. By that I mean gendai haiku incorporates surrealism, symbolism, urbanism and many other tenets we deny as really being part of haiku.  Where do I stand on this issue? Flexibility and free-thinking matter. As Virginia Woolf once said the world changed for good during WW 1--all the arts no longer tried to duplicate reality but used different methods to stretch, bend, and cause us to examine the world in a radically new way.

Here's what haiku writer,  Richard Gilbert, who lives and teaches in Japan, said about gendai haiku:

“During the war, over 40 New Rising Haiku poets were persecuted; they were imprisoned and tortured, and some died in prison. … [The director of a haiku society associated with the government stated:] ‘I will not allow haiku even from the most honorable person, from left-wing, or progressive, or anti-war, groups to exist. If such people are found in the haiku world, we had better persecute them, and they should be punished. [B]y the 1920s … the ‘New Rising Haiku movement’ (shinkô haiku undô) wished to compose haiku on new subjects, and utilize techniques and topics related to contemporary social life. These poets frequently wrote haiku without kigo (muki-teki haiku), and explored non-traditional subjects, such as social inequity, utilizing avant‑garde styles including surrealism, etc. …

(Kigo are words that point to a particular season, to set the poem during a certain part of the natural cycle of life and change. Examples include, mist, frost, frogs, wisteria, cicada, etc.)

Wow, to persecute and punish haiku writers? For having a rabbit leap over the moon? On the plus side, it's wonderful that words have power.

As British politician Pearl Strachan said, "Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs."

If you're curious about gendai haiku, check out this link. If you follow the link under each author, you will find some selected haiku that has been translated into English. Here's the link: http://gendaihaiku.com/

The Real and Surreal

 newly paved road
 even the rabbit leaps
 over the moon


Just back from the Southwest--New Mexico and southern Utah, the high desert, land of extraordinary light.  With the thin air and the brilliant, unfiltered light, perception alters. You see things you don't ordinarily see, and ordinary things look extraordinary and new.

To say nothing of the annular solar eclipse that I was lucky to witness, my first in two and a half decades. The last one I watched was in the Berkeley rose garden when my children were young.  A great spot to observe an extraordinary celestial event, but so was Albuquerque.

Through sheer serendipity, I chose May 20th to fly into the city. Everyone was abuzz with "eclipse fever."  My husband who was supposed to be there also managed to miss the flight (something to do with a backpack of necessary gadgets!)

The first place I wandered was Old Town where I found the Museum of Natural History. I paid my admission and entered. First thing I noticed was a big sign announcing WE ARE SOLD OUT OF VIEWING GLASSES. Alas, I must admit I had an ulterior motive in choosing that museum of one dedicated to art.

But they had great dinosaur exhibits and a nice planetarium show, another of my secret vices. If you can't see the constellations well, see them from a plush seat in a very dark room.

Afterwards, I found a volunteer who was dispensing flyers on the time of the eclipse, beginning, maximum, end. As I was reading the literature, a couple stood next to me and kept asking the volunteer for anywhere in town to get the "safe" glasses. Lo and behold, she pulled a white bag from behind her back (like a magician) and gave them a pair.

They walked away. She looked at me. I stared back with a pleading look in my eyes. "You're not with them?" she asked. "Nope."

Very reluctantly (because she was obviously saving her glasses for more worthy subjects) she gave me a pair. And I did put them to good use. I shared them with at least ten people that evening on the small hill in the city park across from the museums where we had a lovely eclipse-watching party. One man had two welder's lenses. A family had a long tube where they projected sun shadows onto the sidewalk. A Native American family allowed the sun to shine through a pinhole.

First, we noticed a small nib of the moon gone in the lower right corner. Then it grew to a large bite. Finally, it nearly covered the sun and we saw the ring of fire. Dramatic, beautiful. In between an ice cream selling cyclist pedaled by playing music. A memorable night.

A Startling of Starlings

dog racing past

startles one starling

then all

Gorgeous spring day, perfect temperature, light breeze. Now it's newly dark and Venus lanterns one corner of sky.  (Don't forget the transit of Venus is coming on June 5th--a rare astronomical occurrence.)

I think the seed of this haiku came from a reference question I had yesterday about the group name for a particular species of bird. I just love the whimsy and humor of these descriptive words: a charm of finches, a kettle of hawks, a muster of storks and a nye of pheasants. But the pheasants have to be on the ground, no less! 

It's sad because we are losing so much of the wonderful specificity of language to describe the natural world. Check out this interesting list: http://baltimorebirdclub.org/gnlist.html

Nearly every night, Mister Darcy and I walk past a couple of bamboo trees. If we come close to sunset, we always watch the hurried trajectories of tens of starlings coming home to roost all at the same time, some birds landing, some birds swooping up and past (for a better sleeping place or one more shot at the sunset--who knows?) If we come shortly after sunset, we end up startling the poor birds, and I feel guilty for creating a ruckus. And if we come in the nearly dark, one starling shakes the leaves and then either the birds explode out of the trees or they all ignore the transgression and quiet returns. Later, of course, in the true dark, it's complete silence and stillness.

River Fast and Fleet

river rushing past

barely a moment

to say hello


My favorite thing to do by any swift water with boulders is to climb out on a big rock at sunset, and just sit and watch the play of light on the river. First I am totally focused on the movement of the river itself, gallons and gallons of water pouring past, hurrying, hurrying, but then as the light changes, I like to observe the varying colors of the water itself, the rocks, the trees, and even the sky.  Then the river becomes a shadow play interspersed with pockets of light.

In North Carolina, we camped at Horse Cove; the Little Santeelah Creek was right next to our campsite. I love to go to sleep to the rhythm of river sounds.

The thing with river-sitting or river-gazing, is you can do it for a very long time, and still have to force yourself to move on. There is something infinitely fascinating about fast water journeying past.  Usually, only almost-darkness prods me off my boulder and back to the terrestrial world.

Rocker Heaven or Rocker Limbo?

so many rockers

moving gently in wind--
empty mailboxes


This is a photo of Thomas Wolfe's  childhood home in Asheville, North Carolina. It's been moved several blocks to this location where there's also a small museum honoring the author. The site of all these lonely rocking chairs drew me near.

Thomas Wolfe's father was a stone cutter who also made and inscribed graves. Thomas wrote incredibly long, convoluted novels (Look Homeward, Angel is a famous one)  that had to be cut and shaped by his editor, Max Perkins who said that before he met Wolfe he felt a great foreboding.

On this porch, I discovered a real sense of the power of memory. This outer southern living room, now so silent, was once part of a boarding house full of people telling each other stories during summer twilights.

And here's a comment that I came across today about haiku as a wordless poem:

"When I first read Alan Watt's characterization of haiku as "the wordless poem," I thought it was because a haiku had so few words, but now I believe it goes deeper than that (whether Watts intended it so or not). Haiku, for the reader, is wordless because those few words are invisible. We as readers look right through them. There is nothing between us and the moment."

—Cor van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology, Third Edition (New York: Norton, 2000), xxix.

Maestro Frogs

      following the frogs' directions
      an opossum crosses the road


These nights walking at twilight, it certainly seems as though the frogs in their watery roosts are directing everything: the last wayward starling, the startled yearling deer seen in a neighbor's yard, and the ground-brailling opossum lumbering his way to the hunt for night insects or low-lying bird eggs.

Then occurs that moment where my dog clacks past and the frogs dramatically lower the volume of their chirring, down, down, way down, as though condescending to hide their wall of sound. Only a few of us are here, not many. Not worth your time.


I've been reading some haiku literature again. I came upon some more comments from Jane Reichhold. She said, “the way I live in order to be prepared to receive haiku inspiration is more valuable to me than the poems I finally do write.” I believe that she means that in seeking to write haiku, she lives a better, more realized life than she would have if haiku were not an important part of it.

Reichhold also believes that if you possess the following six attitudes, then you will be blessed with the “gift” of haiku. Yes, she does consider them gifts. Here are the six states of mind she advocates for creating haiku. And if you don’t write haiku at all, it's still fine advice for living a good life.

She suggests “being aware, nonjudgmental, and reverent. “ Then she believes you should have “a sense of oneness, simplicity, and humility.”