The Japanese poetic form called haiku seems perfectly tailored as a discipline for someone who writes about “natural living.”
In its classical form, a haiku requires 1. a natural or seasonal reference; 2. three lines of text—the first and third lines containing five syllables, the middle line containing seven; 3. two concrete, sensory images separated by a pivotal phrase or word that links them, often in some surprising way.
The requirement for a seasonal reference draws attention to what’s going on right now in the natural world. The forced brevity and requirement for concrete everyday words are great for improving writing, and the requirement to link simple images from the sensory world to some insight or other can strengthen a writer’s ability to infuse her prose with broader and deeper layers of meaning.
For all those reasons and more, I write haiku almost every day. I never labor over them or rewrite them, but just set down what emerges spontaneously. Here’s a random selection from 2016.
January
magical snowscape
takes my breath away~I’ve spent
two hours shoveling
minus forty-five
yesterday, but tomorrow
forty-eight above
February
day after blizzard
melting snowman leaves red scarf
fluttering in mud
spring arrived early
confused buds burst~but sadly
died before they lived
March
spring in my kitchen
buckets and buckets of forced
forsythia blooms
birthday day today
sun shining, ice melting
all of it in me
April
sound of spring peepers
time to stop lugging firewood
start mowing the lawn
looking out today
who'd predict weekend blizzard
will bring winter back
May
after long spring drought
a long day of rain—yet we'll
never stop grumbling
warm sun, thick green grass
young cattle jump fence, craving
a taste of freedom
June
late-June morning
munching strawberries, but Whoa!
this one shared with slug
my small backyard pond
great for shampoos~all that algae
thickens the tresses
July
my attic office
overlooks shrubs, lawn, flowers
all of us wilting
birds, chipmunks, beetles
share my food crops~I call it
tithing to Nature
August
what's with all this wind?
even the sturdy cornstalks
lie down in its path
slender dry tendril
twists up from buttercup stem
both our dreams fulfilled
September
wind rattles grass seeds
from dry stalks~next spring they'll sprout
among my vegetables
bittersweet berries
in blue vase~outside their vines
strangle the maple
October
out attic window
lichen-studded limbs stretch bare
to catch first snowflakes
stiff grass white with frost
footfalls crunch against hard ground
milkweed down floats by
November
autumn walk through woods
so many acorns~should have
worn my bike helmet
we don hunting hats
blaze orange; no we don't hunt
but come back alive
December
big chunks of firewood
no warmth from them without this
handful of splinters
winter fast upon us
may the snow fall light upon
that old shed of ours
Try your own hand at haiku!
