I'll note here the insights gained and the Haiku I wrote.
Day 1 we were asked to choose a Haiku that someone else had written and comment on why.
The lake is lost
in the rain which is lost
in the lake
- Brother David Steindl-Rast
I loved this mysterious circle of one-ness.
Day 2: "Write a Haiku of an immediate experience. Remember that the strict 5-7-5 syllable format is not essential. It is the spirit of capturing a moment in a single brief expression that counts.
The sun gently filters
through the closed curtains.
Fling them wide
-Sheila
Day 3: "Haiku is all about the fleeting preciousness of experience, nature and our seamless connection to everything." -Tom Clausen
Sparkling calm water
pounding surf breaking so roughly
it's all one ocean.
-Sheila
This physical reality parallels my life experience right now.
Day 4: Haiku capturing a peak experience when the 'self' was somehow lost in the moment.
Day 4: Haiku capturing a peak experience when the 'self' was somehow lost in the moment.
Grassy green glade
solitary child entranced
with overflowing fulness
-Sheila
This is a memory of my childhood summers on Ponui Island. 'The glade' was a special place I often sat alone. I can still 'feel' the wonder as I recall it.
Day 5: Today be childlike and playful and write from that space.
Day 6: In his book, A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness, Br. David Steindl-Rast writes:
The Haiku is, paradoxically, a poem about silence. Its very core is silence. There is probably no shorter poetic form in world literature than the classical Haiku with its seventeen syllables and, yet. The masters put these seventeen syllables down with a gesture of apology, which makes it clear that the words merely serve the silence. All that matters is the silence. The Haiku is a scaffold of words; what is being constructed is a poem of silence; and when it is ready, the poet gives a little kick, as it were, to the scaffold. It tumbles, and silence alone stands.
Day 5: Today be childlike and playful and write from that space.
Benjy was the name
of my Teddy and sometimes
I still miss him!
-Sheila
The Haiku is, paradoxically, a poem about silence. Its very core is silence. There is probably no shorter poetic form in world literature than the classical Haiku with its seventeen syllables and, yet. The masters put these seventeen syllables down with a gesture of apology, which makes it clear that the words merely serve the silence. All that matters is the silence. The Haiku is a scaffold of words; what is being constructed is a poem of silence; and when it is ready, the poet gives a little kick, as it were, to the scaffold. It tumbles, and silence alone stands.
The deep blue sky
just is...
No need for proclamation.
-Sheila
Day 7: In a brief description of haiku, Br. David Steindl-Rast writes, “The best among them capture a moment of intense awareness; they awake your senses. No comment by the poet; simply one given moment which is fully – and thus gratefully – perceived.”
The welcoming Easter moon
surprised me in the
duck egg sky.
-Sheila
Day 8: Br. David Steindl-Rast writes: “the one basic condition of the human psyche that accounts for genuine happiness is living in the now.” Haiku is a wonderful way of doing just that. On this last day of the exploring Haiku course we are encouraged to write a Haiku a day.
Today - Good Friday
Sun peeps through the clouds.
Appropriate.
-Sheila
