Haiku! Do you?

 I try to read and write some small poetry each morning, somewhere between the early walk, the yoga, and the attempted meditation.  Because I am usually on a self-imposed and wholly arbitrary schedule, and also getting a bit lazier as I mature, these poems are more often than not haikus.  My readings include some serious poets, and trying to find an epigraph and express my reactions or insights in seventeen syllables poses a good challenge.  Most of the time, I see my haiku as reductive and expressive of a lesser poet, but sometimes I quite like them.  I am presenting here several from the first five months of this slowly widening world, probably not the best, but ones I liked well enough to share with my online poetry reading last Saturday.

Your challenge is to respond in the comments section with a haiku of your own.  If enough people respond to make it interesting, I will pick a winner, based on criteria which will be all mine and likely as mysterious to me as to you.  The winner will receive a copy of the now-out-of-print classic, Chopping Wood and Carrying Water, a 1980's anthology with poems by Roslyn Strohl, Norma Grunwald, and me, and drawings by Marian Stevens.  If you already have CWCW, a suitable substitute will be found at the discretion of the judge (me).  I'd just love to see some feedback.  So get to scribbling, please!

                                                  JANUARY – MAY, 2021   HAIKU

At the bottom of

the well, enlightenment starts.

I bring moon to well. 

Jan. 7

 

(RUMI)  This is how a human being can change:

…Suddenly, he wakes up,

Call it grace, whatever…

This is how a country can change:

it wakes up, call it

Grace, or insight, or terror.

It votes for the good.

Jan. 21 (I know, it’s not a haiku – cheating a bit here).

 

What calls you is you

walking the outline of your

face on the blank world

Jan. 27

 

(Rumi) I have lived on the lip of insanity

Luckily I jumped

Before I was a tasty

Morsel for Satan.

 

 (Rumi) Love is for vanishing into the sky

Oh no, Rumi!  Love

Is your grandson’s warm wet kisses,

His sister’s, “Gwamma!”

 

(Rumi) Dive in the ocean, leave and let the sea be you.

I am ninety-eight

percent Pacific, Atlantic, Med,

etc.; salt seas are me.

 

(Rumi) Everywhere is falling / everywhere

I will ride falling

 skies from nowhere into

nowhere.  Then I’ll be home.