Walking my dog Sirius this morning, I noticed the thousands of pink petals carpeting the black asphalt roadside. A strong wind had whipped through overnight, and I realized it had stripped most of the petals from my neighbor’s crab apple tree, robbing it of much of its spring magnificence. The sight reminded me of cherry blossoms, which in turn reminded me of Japanese haiku. As we walked, I began composing haiku in my head, and when we returned, after breakfast I repaired upstairs to my office and captured my observations.
Warm spring southwest wind
Whips across my morning face
Clouds scud across sun
Pepto Bismol pink
Petals from the crab apple
Carpet the gutter
Six Chihuahuas strain
Against their slender leashes
My chow wags, confused
Should he take them on
Or sniff their tiny butts instead?
Better not find out
Roughly twenty feet
Between us, we owners chat
About our babies
The beige Chihuahua’s
Mother to all the brown ones,
She tells me proudly
Moving on, my dog
Pauses to poop. I bag it
In thin pink plastic
Next we happen on
A neighbor pruning fruit trees
On his lakeside lawn
Over the winter,
Hungry deer stripped the foliage
Of his arborvitae
Clear up to five feet.
Scraggly twigs are all that’s left
Beneath the crowning balls
He’s fatalistic,
Says he’ll wrap them in black plastic
Fencing. They’ll grow back.
On our way back home,
We greet a mother cradling
George, her toddler son
Sirius sniffs his feet
And wags. The little boy smiles
My dog and I trudge uphill
Toward home, greet Tiki,
The gray retired racehorse
Across the street.
Tossing the poop bag
Into the black garbage bin,
I count my blessings.
Living in upstate New York is definitely high on my list of blessings. Arguably we enjoy the best climate in the continental United States—if you enjoy experiencing all four seasons, that is. It can be wildly unpredictable, and we’re experiencing an unsettling warming trend due to climate change. But by and large, we’re spared the severe droughts, the tornadoes, the floods that plague other regions of the country. This morning on Facebook my neighbor Wendy, owner of Tiki, the horse in my poem, posted a photo of an enormous pine tree that crashed in her back yard during last night’s windstorm, but fortunately it missed her house. My heart goes out to those affected by devastating weather elsewhere. As for me, I’m not planning on moving any time soon.
The haiku form of poetry is a wonderful way of capturing your observations on the fly. For a time, as a spiritual practice, I wrote a haiku every morning after walking Sirius, and I highly recommend it as a way of centering yourself and counting your blessings. A single haiku consists of just three lines. In the classic form, the first line contains five syllables, the second contains seven syllables, and the third contains five. But it’s okay to cut yourself a little slack, as I’ve done here—there are different schools of thought on the subject.
Why not leave me a haiku in the comment section? Or not—it’s up to you. But in any case, please leave me a comment, and subscribe to my blog so as not to miss anything.
POSTSCRIPT: As I format this post prior to publication, WordPress keeps screwing around with the spacing and deleting the spaces between the three-line stanzas. I’ve tried fixing it several times to no avail, and it’s bringing me uptight, so I guess I’ll leave it. Good practice for you, the reader, in counting the syllables for yourself. In any case, it’s time to watch the Kentucky Derby now!
Julie Lomoe: The Creative Crone 