haikus from a year ago

I promised Prajna about a year ago I would share with her the haikus I wrote while walking around Eden Hall Farm last fall. It's taken me a year, sadly, to get them typed for her. I thought I would share them here, my own personal auditorium, because haikus are an interesting artform that have more to them than mere line breaks and syllable count. I'm not very good at them, but they are fun and can sometimes get out something we are burying, which is true I feel for most writing forms. As I am in perhaps not a writers block but a lifestyle block where I cannot seem to allow myself time to sit and write, perhaps in fear of what may or may not come out, it is good to go back and look at where I was a year ago. Looks like I was in about the same place, all things considered. Here they are:



Haikus inspired by a solitary walk in the woods near Eden Hall Farm. Autumn, '08.


Carolyne Whelan

whelan.writes@gmail.com




But what if I

don't want to head into

this wilderness



Life my bare belly

high into an unheard

ocean of a scream?



I yell at traffic

throw rocks at it, shout it

straight into phone poles.



My hat pulled over

my eyes still does nothing

to block the blaze.
*



Navigating trails

back to the farm, I hear

footsteps – everywhere.



Twigs crack under

the bruise of my bootstep, but

another prowls here too—



In the woods, coyotes

prey on the last drips of sun

dying on low leaves.



I think of poetry while

the birds chant migration songs

mantras of loneliness.



On the roof, a squirrel

gathers nuts against the sunset

and above – the hawk.


What was Eden but

a place of trees and prey

and humans, who chose The Word.



No matter how loud,

"Let there be light" will never

return to me the sun.



The birch tree is bare

but for the grey sky it surrenders

and the hawk nest, so high.