National Haiku Day

You aren’t the only one! I have to admit I have just learned that today, April 17, is National Haiku Day. I can’t let it slip past without posting some of my favorite musings in this classical Asian literary form. It’s only natural that I would favor haiku poetry since it’s a written reflection of the moments I’m always capturing with my camera. Haiku are excellent practice for children’s authors. They contain only the most evocative images in words clear as glass. Like children’s picture books which are anything but simple in conception or creation if they are to be fresh and memorable, haiku are flashes of realization. They should be lightbulbs of recognition and identification, or provide new ways of seeing. It’s scary to write one because of the danger of falling short of the ancient masters. Still, writers seek to join the tradition because of the zen which haiku creation brings. Here are some of mine which follow the three-line, five-seven-five syllable structure:

A green leaf withers             

Gobbled in mindless frenzy

Soon, a butterfly

 

 

Bumpy wrinkled thing

Some say you have no beauty

But your song is strong

 

You have gone away

I watch a small wren working

and find great comfort

 

 

 

Full skirts shield shy eyes

like fish among pond lilies

Youth and spring repeat

 

Cold and mist unite

trailing veils of winter white

snow is rain’s soft bride

 

Small bird sends his thoughts

speaking worlds in two bright eyes

before the singing

 

 

Sharing National Poetry Month

April is special for many reasons – a bird nest in every one of the nestboxes painted by our daughter, four in bushes, roses filling the trellises and blowing petals everywhere, Easter eggs still in the fridge, extra reading and exploring time during Spring Break, and it’s National Poetry Month!

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry, like music and art, speaks to the soul. We identify, smile, feel comforted by various forms of word patterns. Whether realistic, abstract, colorful, inspiring, funny, solemn, reverent or irreverent, there are poems for every time in life. For me, it isn’t always necessary for a poem to provide an answer or a definite conclusion. Sometimes I’d rather interpret the words my own way. The main joy in discovering a poem is that it evokes emotion.

I have far too many favorites to list. Some follow strict literary form, some are free verse; I love haiku and tanka, and limericks. My journal is full of all kinds of poetry, and our fridge sports poems which change from time to time.

Here are a couple that I have written for children’s magazines and for the children in my life. I get grins and lots of funny comments which makes writing worthwhile. Sometimes the words come first, and other times I capture a photo which gives me the words. I’m rarely without my camera, paper, and pen. Here they are:

Best Friends

I have a little puppy                            

I love her very much.

She rolls with tummy uppy

when she first feels my touch.

I scratch her chin to belly

and hold her in my lap.

Her legs go soft as jelly

and she stays to take a nap.

I see my best friend’s sleeping head

resting on my knee.

What does she see with her eyes

when she looks at me?

The Magician

I sat on the porch by a plant in a pot                               

Watching an ant cross a big waterspot.

Then out of the leaves popped a sleepy-eyed head

Like the color of clay or a strange rusty-red.

It turned this way and that and looked sort of mean                                       While I watched it turn into a bright shade of green!             

I wanted to ask how the heck it did that, but

Before I could speak it leaped onto my hat.

I waved my hands wildly all over the top

But the thing disappeared in the leaves with a PLOP!

Here’s one by Wendell Berry for the adults in our children’s lives:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me                  

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought        

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Happy reading and writing during Poetry Month, and every month of the year.

The Number One Spot

Time management has never been more important to me than now. I have a new e-book, on-going work on two more, marketing plans, a terrific husband – and our daughter has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This is a perfect example of “Life happens while you’re making plans.” All the plans get rearranged and re-prioritized, with the family always landing in the number one spot.

Thanksgiving, 2011, found me, as usual, preparing for a festive family day. The day before Thanksgiving, I had finally completed the edits for my first e-book, and returned the manuscript for final formatting and publication. All my treasured heirloom recipes from both grandmothers and Mother had been retrieved from their files, ingredients assembled, kitchen appliances utilized to the max. My husband, Jim, was busily chopping and often asking, “What next?” We are a finely-honed team in the culinary/entertaining department.

Thanksgiving Day was full of good food and thanks, just as we had planned. Our daughter spent the day with her husband’s family, but we had a full table at our house. The next day brought a shocking answer to Jim’s “What next?” in one of those time-stopping moments. It came in a phone call, while Jim chopped more vegetables and I wrestled a turkey carcass into a huge soup pot.

“Ring, ring.” I grabbed a kitchen towel and remarked that this was a heck of a time for the phone to ring. The voice on the other end of the phone said, “Mom.” That one word, in that one tone, put me on instant alert. All parents know what I mean. “Can you put me on speaker so Dad can hear?” That’s how we learned that our daughter, Jeannette, has cancer. We looked at each other with the same parent thoughts speeding our heartbeats. In an instant, all our “what next’s” changed.

Now, four months later, we are immersed in wound care, chemo schedules, blood tests, nutrition and hydration, blood pressure and temperature monitoring, battles with fatigue. Yes, there was the surgery, the waiting, the staging, the lymph node involvement, the complications and setbacks. Months of this will give way to radiation, and then probably two more surgeries.

“How is she?” everyone wants to know. If I had to tell you in one sentence, it would be, “She is a brave soldier.” She gave her long, silky hair early because she said, “Somewhere a child is waiting for this.” (Jeannette has donated her long hair twice before, while she was in peak health, so that a child with hair loss might benefit.)

My “Day by Day” blogs may not be as often as I’d like, but know that every experience we have is stored away until the moment it is needed to take its perfect place in a written thought. This website began as a road of discovery through reading and writing for children. It is just exactly that as we read, write, and discover along this road we walk with our daughter.

This is an illustration from www.tracybishop.com which is such an inspiration for all the rainy days in our lives. It’s full of bright hope and determination as we paddle our boats through the raindrops. Tracy graciously gave me permission to post it here.