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.

AHOY

Submarine
, for Laura Nelson





I hope it was a hard splash. A cold one—

even for New England docks. I hope it felt like rain

on stage at an outside amphitheatre,

like a worthy opponent.



I hope it felt like flight, vertigo, snow in June,

that you saw some god upside-down and vulnerable

right before you hit the sea. I hope you jumped

sideways, shouting obscenities like, "man overboard!"

to the gulls, and I hope they flocked to your wave.



I want to think it felt like sinking

into wood, absorption into a redwood tree.

I hope you could hear the crack.

Tell me about the voices you heard

going down, if all those other friends came

to life to see you plummet. It is miserable

thinking it was on purpose but still

I hope it was no accident—



That the summer bridge, the train tracks

were all planned, the oversized booze

and your favorite red shirt, all planned

and marked on some calendar tucked

in the breast pocket. I want to think it stung



but didn't hurt, that it was all crash,

splash, bullseye on the moon's path,

falling, never hitting bottom.

Place of Trees

Place of Trees a tarot card poem

for Mary


I didn't believe you when you said

these trees are hollow.

"They stack the little ones inside the big ones, that's

how they get their rings."

When I disagreed you asked me if I'd ever

killed one myself, swung this axe I carry

like a trumpeteer carries his instrument, and struck

one down in a blow. I hadn't.

But you gave me flowers anyway, to remind me

we are simply mermaids ventured too far,

that neither of us know a thing about bark, leaves

broken roots rebelling against this dry earth.

I throw up my axe in thanks and it hums

as it reaches to cut the blood orange

from the sky. In this place of trees

everything casts a shadow. Some are big,

hard, full of air and sorrow and unknowing.

And some, if we let go of all we have,

are the sweetest gifts we can give.

burn collector, and elegy

Burn Collector

elegy for Devon Risley




I've been asked to write a poem about food and I think:

Blackbean burgers. Devon. The desert.

I think: That first night, dancing around the kitchen

to Billy Idol, realizing over pots of beans

and fried vegetables and mush that we are doomed

to a sad, inevitable friendship. The kind that starts

and ends in the same place, with the same existential

mantra, the same cheap, sustaining food. The kind

that chokes on a gunshot hallucination

with my feet quaking in a kitchen

in some city 3,000 miles away

like a fisherman feeling a coming tsunami.



I'm supposed to write about food and I think:

can they make liquid smoke out of any smoke?

Throw a bag over to catch, condense,

would they filter a soul out of gunsmoke

and soldered skin before bottling? I pour anyway.

The vegetables pop and sizzle in the heat.

I can sense their sticking in the pan but my hands

are filmed with bean paste and tonight

I am cooking alone.



This is the loss I never prepare for—

three a.m. in a kitchen in Pittsburgh, liquid smoke

spilt on the table, Devon evaporated somewhere

I can't taste, and I just wish there was another

set of hands to scrape the vegetables, patty

the burgers, fry and stack.



I can't think about food. The burgers

aren't spiced right when I make them alone,

some vital hot is gone. The roasting

green chilis turning and crisping in a nearby

parking lot, flavoring the early autumn air

cannot be replaced by some bottle,

some synthetic effigy. I leave the mess

on the table and pull a chair for it to drip onto.



I think: I'm losing my mind. Devon and I

sat for hours that first night, this last one,

two drippy messes sitting at a table eating burgers,

writing poetry. And one of us is thinking too much

and the other isn't doing enough.