Hello, Beach People!
This is the last week of unadulterated summer for our family. Next week, the kids start getting lockers and schedules. School doesn’t start until the week of Labor Day here, but after this week, we have to start preparing. August is always bittersweet.
summer rendezvous
underneath Orion’s belt
on a lonely beach
The Magic of Endings
Poetry was made for endings. It’s the perfect art form to capture the swirling cauldron of emotions that we each bring to every life transition. Even though this is my 47th transition from summer to fall, I’m still overwrought.
Haiku is so often characterized as nature poetry, that most of us take it as a truism. However, the more haiku I’ve written and the more haiku I’ve studied, the less sure I am that haiku is nature poetry at all.
I believe it’s the poetry of humanity. Nature in haiku is really a commentary on the relationship between people and nature, or it is a metaphor for humans as part of nature.
We write haiku about what we notice through our human senses and what we imagine through our human image makers.
Many poems, especially haiku, have been written about the change from winter to spring or summer to fall, and many thousands more magnificent verses have yet to be written about these endings and beginnings.
Why are so many haiku about the change of seasons? Is it not because this change is one of the easiest things for humans to observe and one of the natural events that most affect our daily perceptions?
I challenge you to try writing haiku that centers a human experience of nature, a poem that allows for us to be part of the natural world instead of something outside of it.
Haiku Prompt
Write a haiku or series of haiku about a human perception of something ending. Feel free to use the traditional 5-7-5 format or a free verse format.
Please share your poems in the comments!
Be the poetry you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
Love the artwork today! The word ‘rendezvous’ and poetry for endings made me think about this great:
‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death’ by Alan Seeger
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear ...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Sunsets on a screen
Hawaii is on fire
Quarterly profits