Commentaries | Winter 2006
shoreless
the battleship gray
of sea and sky
T. D’E.
A haiku that keeps undulating in the distance attached to something that isn't there. Initially, "shoreless" is mentally hard to take in when "battleship" is used as an adjective. The haiku turns and sinks into gray as soon as the last line is understood as formless: "sea and sky" are soft and vast, so there is a need to go back to the first line with a wandering eye.
M.F.
people walk and talk
and my mind slowly empties
around Walden Pond
M.F.
...the many circles -- the paths around the pond, the paths taken by the talking people, the silence of your path, and it’s all "around" -- circling -- the pond, which is a kind of hole into which one may empty one's self by opening up to no-thingness. This haiku is a true homage to Thoreau as a culural icon, and its truth is in its freedom from the mindset that keeps the icon in business.
T. D’E.
the cat's hair
has grown particularly fine--
autumn rain
T. D’E.
The base of this haiku is almost a verbatim quote from a note in a book on haiku which noted a Japanese "belief" (Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, vol 1, 177). Yet it had the rhythm of the base of a haiku. The word "particularly" and the image of the "fine" cat hairs seem "over against" the rain in several ways -- starting with a resemblance in the category of "fineness" but then a contrast in mood and if I may say so (this is always the point for me) ontology. The "convention" of "autumn rain" is general, and indeed "conventional" to the point of flatness, yet it points to the large picture (mortality), whereas the base focuses intensely on one "particular" thing, the cat hair, to the point that there's almost a balance between the particular and the universal, but the "point of balance" is BETWEEN the base and the subsection, and that "point" is the analogy of being itself. The beauty - the tzu jan -- is in the difference.
T. D’E.
old leaves
spiral upward --
winter wind
M.F.
Splendid! one can "see it" and "feel" it! The spiral upward. The old mystical question, "can these bones live?" is answered yes and no by the subsection.
T. D’E.
barely white
the first flakes
sting my cheeks
M.F.
A nice smooth motion, from outward to inward and back again – the re-sonance between the inner and outer worlds. The "sting" is a wakeup call -- we are PART of this, and yet different too!
T. D’E.
water
folded on itself --
thin ice
M.F.
It's cosmological: water is the ultimate building block. The beginning. It is a sort of absolute, a sine qua non. An image, in so far as it can be imaged, of no-thingness—before things. The second line suggests a wrinkle: "folded on itself." And it suggests self-consciousness; any fold in being. Ice is also an extreme state of water, far removed from its "original" state, at least as far as we can understand. In any event there's haiku humor: in all this analysis, we are on "thin ice." Thin ice may break through into water, which would be a return to the original state of no-thingness.
T. D’E.
Christmas Day --
only the wake of the official craft
on the steel-blue river
T. D’E.
This so well describes the somnambulistic state of mind on this holiday. "Only the wave" accentuates this slight seasickness as "official craft" on the steel-blue river highlights the extreme stress by using two very hard denominators interacting with one another. Underestimating the power of this holiday is always part of it: even the river has to "steel itself".
M.F.
New Year's Day
from the up draw bridge drop
clumps of dazzling snow
T. D’E.
There is an end and a beginning in this haiku. The toughness of the second line hints at all the work that has been done -- literally the "ups and downs" to release -- in the third line -- a sense of the unknown as it is fixed in the moment -- the image of "dazzling snow"--white that is beyond "itself".
M.F.
what's left
of the broken barn window
winter sunset
M.F.
Here the brokenness of a thing becomes the occasion of tzu-jan. This suggests the ontological difference. The Dark Enigma is not picky: wholeness is its business and nothing, no thing, is whole without it.
T. D’E.
winter dawn
in the white distances
squealing gulls
T. D’E.
This has a vast opening up -- "dawn" & "distances" and "winter & white" give an ironed texture to the space. "Squealing" pinches it and "gulls" bring it into the here and now, the mundane, but the whiteness overall keeps it in the meditative mode. The bird sounds are softened and "winter dawn" becomes singular.
M.F.
under our feet
black ice--
moon viewing
T. D’E.
This haiku is innately balanced re: the way it suggests the "surface" of life (seasonally held) as juxtaposed with aspiration and beauty. Slippery and dark, the "path" forces us to keep one eye on the ice and one on the moon. The gap feels like humanity, but I can't explain it any further -- this sense of human nature.
M.F.
sweeping down low
the ice-covered pine needles
almost touch ground
M.F.
Excellent! This is one of those single sweep haiku, but the ontological difference shines in full glory in that exquisite "almost"!
T. D’E.
haikumuse • publications • commentaries © Single Island Press site design by phineas & metaglyph
zōka notebook • archives • about us • blog
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
603.431.1009
info@haikumuse.com
www.haikumuse.com
photography by ralph morang