The Easter Haiku Overture
White blossom petals Fluttering in the air like Daytime fireflies Birds sing arias Of nature, the audience Below is in awe Sun brightens the sky, Ever continuous for An angle of time Lush grass covers The ground, green is the colour That we breathe today Winds cause the branches To dance; an invisible Woman holds his hand Colour reflects mine Eyes and illuminates the World around me now
Date of First Draft: 22 April 2001 [the Second Sunday of Easter]
Commentary:
I wrote this while sitting down in the family room with a new addition to the family entertainment system [a DVD player], working on some homework on the laptop. I had the blinds pulled back to let the sunlight in to give my poor eyes a break. I was looking idly at the window for a while and loved what I saw. The trees outside had blossomed and looking at the green grass brought a sense of calmness. For this time of year, especially in the wake of pressure to succeed (or more simply, to graduate), it was meditative bliss.
I love the haiku poem. Cliché as it can be, it is the one of the highest fixed forms of poetry that I have encountered. Although it is most simple, it demands a concentration of a fixed moment or picture in time and space with little room to expand and develop. I have read that the haiku is meant as a final picture of nature before death. With this in mind, I usually imagine the poet seeing something and then slowing to a freeze so the poet can be immersed in it for a while longer. The poet is not trying to convey a thought, an epic or an emotion. The poet writing a haiku is more like a photographer, capturing a moment that he or she wants to treasure and then shares it with the world. It is the kind of poem that you say and think with your last breath rather than a poem you deliver with a fanatical rhetoric or esoteric presentation. It is the poem for a single moment of your time for all time and nothing more.