sinking
under the weight of starlight—December's
sun
102: December 28th 2020 | bottlecap
- About Haiku
- A Very Brief Art of Haiku
- Roughly Mondays & Thursdays
sinking
under the weight of starlight—December's
sun
102: December 28th 2020 | bottlecap
·
apology—
····kissing before the snow on her lips
········melts
·
101 February 18th 2016 | bottlecap
·
·
the moon’s
····sliver—
····umbrella in a snowstorm
·
Driving home tonight, the moon was a sliver appearing above the horizon, just under the fringe of westward clouds. The snow came and went, blotting out the darker the sky.
·
67: January 12th 2016 | bottlecap
I write for perfection in my poetry. A haiku a day forces me to post poetry I normally wouldn’t. This afternoon while I sat in Spaulding auditorium, watching my family practice in the Christmas Revels, I reconsidered last night’s haiku. I explain too much. In brevity, I think, is greater expressiveness.
·
in
····the window at night—seeing only
··············myself
only·
I wrote for a while at the Hanover book store. Looking out a window at night is like looking into a mirror, even on a busy street.
I like being by myself in a busy corner—a comfortable kind of loneliness.
36: December 12th 2015 | bottlecap
··
We journeyed to the south today. Out for Christmas shopping. The morning began as the season’s most beautiful. Low clouds in the valleys left the trees a brilliant white, especially beautiful above the green grass and the copper of their fallen leaves.
·Din
midnight
······frost—trees floating above the valley’s
···············clouds
·
We travelled south over the White River then out of the clouds in Pomfret. The field’s brittle golden rod, wild parsnip, yarrow, meadowsweet, Queen Anne’s lace and aster were bursting with tufts of sunlit frost.
·
sunrise—
·····December’s wildflowers must also
···············melt
·
Further south along Route 100, the road rises skyward until the vast expanse of the Greens laces the horizon. A lone farmhouse overlooked the valley and I wondered at the beauty of the view—and also the loneliness.
30: December 6th 2015
·
after
····three days of rain—the spotless
········moon
·
·
29: December 5th 2015 | bottlecap
·
I woke last night, sometime in the early morning, and saw the moon through the frosted window. Over the motionless field it seemed especially bright.
Basho wasn’t Basho’s birth name, nor was it Buson’s or Issa’s. Basho assumed his haiku name when his disciples built him a hut and planted a banana tree beside it. Basho, which is Banana tree in Japanese, was named after it. When I was writing haiku several years ago I signed my haiku with my nickname—bottlecap (because of my bottlecap glasses). So if I’m going to pass myself off as a haikuist, then it seems to me I ought to get back to signing my haiku that way—by my haiku name.
·
eggshells
····in the old mailbox—last summer’s
··············delivery
·
·
28: December 4th 2015 | bottlecap
·
As I was clearing room for wood, I moved an old mailbox atop its rotten post. It had been left leaning on the shed wall. When I picked it up, out fell a Barn Swallow’s nest and its eggshells. I decided to lean it round the corner for another swallow and for another carpenter—who might also wonder why it wasn’t thrown out.