Throughout the years I’ve found that my heaviest moods can be lifted, at least for a time, by the lightest of songs from these shrewd, dark birds.
raven song
small black stones drop
through clear blue silence
and splash ever so lightly
in still water thoughts
ripples expand concentric
rebounding from the edge of mind
sliding back beneath eccentric
rings that wimple shards of light
and fade
This was drafted near the end of a seven day walk on Lost Coast Trail. I’m pretty sure this was inspired by the beach at Bear Harbor, near the northern end of the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.
Rinse
A small set of haiku inspired by late autumn in Ukiah, specifically the turning of a few tall birch trees growing in the front yard.
birch
Though I did a lot of journaling while I was out on my seven day walk on the Lost Coast Trail at the beginning of the month, I only wrote one small poem. This wee tanka.
Usal vespers
Usal Beach is at the southern end of the Lost Coast Trail. I have on many occasions driven all the way out there from Ukiah just to spend a night under the redwoods and alders.
And the second of the two haiku posted today. During winter, dew that settled during the night here in Ukiah will sometimes evaporate at sunrise into heavy mists that carpet neighborhood lawns and garden plots. This phenomenon lasts for a very short time—an hour tops—so I count myself lucky when I get to see it.
iris mist
hints of pastel blue
sift through silent folds of gray
swaying in the void
Two haiku today, posted separately. They were written on the fly to demonstrate the way a haiku should say nothing but show everything. Here’s the first of the two.
electric willow
long leaf branches flail
howling twisted shadows stark
against the door frame
Treatises are better suited to poetic forms that grant space for explication. Of course, there are the rare haiku maxims that lodge within mind and recycle there almost indefinitely. But still, even those are usually in image form, avoiding overt exposition. And those maxim haiku are probably not really haiku anyway, but successful aphorisms.
Is it showing that I have a fever? Day three. I’m getting a bit tired of the dizzy delirium.
I found myself enjoying a cloud mural painted in the skies above Ukiah’s western ridges this evening. I felt it deserved a tanka.
valley dusk
A wee haiku. I Love these things. This was inspired by the island mountains that rise from the desert floor in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
wane
sundial mountains
stretch their giant shapes across
the lessening days
Another one pulled from the drafts of my little hiking journal. When I backpack, I’ll take a couple of bansuri flutes along. And in the evenings when all is quiet, I’ll try to play my surroundings. I’ve found that most places carry a song that can be felt and transposed through an instrument.
transposition
Over time I’ve learned the habit of casting all my sense across some scene, some place of peace and stillness, and in my heart asking to know its song. Then, if I’m fortunate, I’ll close my eyes and feel the sounds come through me, and I’ll find them on my flute. Then we’ll play together, me and the spirits who live there.
Another shorty from the journal markings I made while out on the Lost Coast Trail last month. This is also inspired by my two nights at Jackass Creek, which is where I was inspired to jot down the drafts for “True Nature” and “Glance”.
rhythms
the world is rhythm
waves against tall gray bluffs
wind rising falling over hilltops
crickets somewhere in the darkness
cicadas somewhere in thick green brush
woodpeckers atop long dead pines
and deep beyond sight the song
of robins calling back the sun
This one was scribbled out as I sat atop a giant bit of driftwood watching the waves during a recent hike on the Lost Coast Trail in Northern California’s Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.
True Nature
