The new job I started last year changed the route I drive to
work, with the view of the downtown courthouse dome looming above the trees. Actually,
it isn’t the new route at all—I still drive down Walnut before the same left
turn on Grimes. Rather, what has changed is haiku.
I’ve been dabbling in haiku for a couple years but the pace
has picked up. I see them rolling across the lawn… like dandelion puffs. Well,
not our lawn because my partner chemically eliminates them, but other lawns.
Maybe I should say, like a leaf rolling across the lawn. Either way, as I have
first dabbled, then studied, and taken on a haiku mind, haiku have started
happening to me. I don’t so much write them as see them already there, offering
themselves to me.
two mornings this week
sun flashing off the courthouse
before I turn west
morning’s golden glow
on the courthouse dome downtown
on my drive to work
there above the trees
the browned courthouse dome is perched
the end of summer
But, like I said, it isn’t the drive that has changed at all—but
me. There is grace that begs to be noticed on the drive to work. Or in the
patient rooms of the hospital where I work. Or the walk to my car after work.
I love that you see haiku! It reminds me of a story of a poet once, who said that her experience of poems was like a train that she needed to catch. Once she caught the tail end and the poem came to her backwards. Peace, E
ReplyDeleteThank you, Elizabeth. I'm not sure I understand it myself--the Mystery, I guess?
ReplyDelete