Paddling Sausalito

Off Sausalito

A motor yacht's bright topsides

Reflect paddler.

Wireless World

winter moon needs no
wireless communication 

to talk to poets

-dan gurney

Vapor Waves

here sky falls to earth
waves of vapor wash us well
we live inside sky

Dialogue Haiku: Complete

If only you knew:
You are already complete.
You just don't know it.


Dialogue Haiku is a form of collaboration, this one over time and space. Two authors contribute to it. I composed the first line. The second and third lines were written by Zen Master Seung Sahn.

Contemplating the First Precept

The first Buddhist precept is non-harming.


Each fall my classroom is invaded with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of common house flies. Our school's out in the country and there are cows and horses around. Lotsa flies, too. I have swatted countless flies. During my career, I've become an accurate and efficient user of the fly swatter, but each year it's harder and harder for me to do it..

I know the flies I swat just want to have a good day. They're going about their business, not meaning me any harm. I'll admit that they give me plenty of unwanted attention from time to time. Especially right before they die off, around Thanksgiving. That's when they can get really pesky and land over and over again somewhere on my head.

When I kill them, I feel like a murderer. Am I alone in feeling this way? Please, someone tell me I'm not too weird, not alone in this feeling.






 Here's a Haiku:

please do not swat me

let me clean myself in peace

we'll all fly away

Haiku by Issa

oh, do not swat them

unhappy flies forever

wringing their thin hands

—Issa

Canoe Haiku

sitting at anchor

on the floor of a canoe

wave meditation

Paddling Upstream

paddling upstream
longing to find the calm mind
before climate change

Dialogue: Trees

Recently my friend, Jim Wilson, published a post on his blog about the Haiku of Hayden Carruth. One of the poems he discusses has really lingered with me.

It lingered long enough I decided that I wanted to add two 7 syllable lines to it to transform his Haiku into a Tanka via poetic collaboration through time and space.

Jim calls this sort of collaboration “Dialogues” and he discusses it on his blog.

The result, I feel, is an apt fitting of process and product:



Dialogue: Trees

Trees, naked trees
stopped in their tracks, so peaceful
talking together. (Carruth)

A word an hour, or less—
And nothing but the whole truth (DG)

Pelicans, A Haiku

 Image from kookaburra.typepad.com

Not just pelicans

Shellfish, whales, and dolphins drown—

Hope, too, drowns in oil.

Haiku: Men in 2010

Just about everywhere I go, in everything I do, women outnumber men 2 to 1.
Where are the men? Here's a haiku that attempts to answer that question:


Watching TV sports
Pretending they're not depressed
Men in 2010.

With thanks to blogger David King over at Pics and Poems.

Eight Days in New York, a Haiku

This one's for Elizabeth Gurney, M.D. Fond memories linger.


eight days in New York
subways, stadium, the stage
two plates at Jojo's

Clarity, A Haiku

Ignorance obscures
Clarity of mind present
Always above clouds.

A "Perfect" Haiku

After just one week of vacation away

from kindergarten

I must put myself through

exacting psychological adjustment.



I must do what

is required of any kindergarten teacher.

We adults who must dive back into

the universe as it appears

through the eyes

of a five year-old child.


A kindergarten teacher must

clear away mental clutter

 so that he can share the news

of, say, a new loose tooth

as if a loose tooth

were the most important event of a lifetime.




For from a student’s point of view,

a new loose tooth IS earthshaking news.





I was trying to empty my mind late last night.

Sleeplessly because thunderheads

Were emptying themselves on my town.




Rain flooded the Laguna.



Here is what the Laguna looked like before the rain:

























 And here is how it looked this afternoon, after the rain.













Sleepless in last night’s deluge,

I decided to compose a perfect haiku.

Simple,

elegant.

Five syllables

Seven syllables.

Five syllables.

With alliteration,

With rhyme.

A theme inspired by nature.

A single image.

And one that would help me

Remember how important

a loose tooth really is.

(A loose tooth would be earthshaking in my mouth at my age!)




The Haiku I composed

In the wee hours last night

Seemed like inspired genius.



After a cup of tea at breakfast.

It seemed somewhat less brilliant

Anyway, here’s my

mind-emptying,

nature-themed,

5-7-5

Rhyming

Alliterative

Haiku

Rainy, rainy, rain
Rainy, rainy, rainy rain.
Rainy rainy, rain.

I’ll bet my kindergartners would like it.

5-7-5 Haiku: Restless for Beuaty

restless for beauty—
spring walk, chilled late afternoon
wind, clouds, drops—rainbow!

Japanese Death Poems

“Japanese Death Poems?” my wife asked. “Why would anyone want to write, much less read death poems?”

“Christian recommended this book to me,” was my reply. “He said that he found the poems pithy and powerful. When I saw the book at the library and borrowed it. I’m enjoying it. The Japanese seem to have a somewhat different view of death than is common here in America. Would you like to hear one?” I asked guessing, correctly, that what her answer would be. Ah well.

But maybe you, dear blog reader, would you like to listen to what a few Japanese Haiku poets and Zen practitioners had to say in their last moments?

If so, read on.

This one’s by Shiyo, who died on the fourth day of the second month, 1703 at the age of thirty-two.

Surely there’s a teahouse
with a view of plum trees
on Death Mountain, too.



Kozan died on the twenty-sixth day of the ninth month, 1747 at the age of forty-six saying,

How sublime—
a boat beneath the moon
and from within, a prayer.






And Ryoto’s Tanka delivered on the day he died in 1669 at the age of seventy-five:

Till now
I thought that only
others die
that such happiness
should fall to me!

5-7-5 Haiku: A Question for America

Do vacation homes
Outnumber homeless people
In this great country?

2 Verse Haiku

Saturday I posted a 5-7-5 Haiku, but I've come to feel it leaves out too much of the story, so I'm reposting it with a follow-up 5-7-5 Haiku to tell the rest of the story.

The Saturday Haiku was about staying in the NOW. Staying grounded in the actual reality here, now can help us stop telling the miserable stories that we tell  (and retell) ourselves. It can also free us from our anxieties about the future.

By keeping centered in the NOW we can respond to the moment with just the appropriate response.

That said, however, I think it's important to keep in mind that what we do now shapes our future and our future lives.

I'm among those who recognize the fact that the vast majority of people throughout history have believed in some form of reincarnation. I'm not prepared to dismiss the majority of human experience simply because there's no scientific basis for it. Or is there? Physicists say that 90% of the universe is dark matter about which we know very little. Perhaps this dark matter hides heavenly realms?

Getting free of stories of the past and anxieties about the future can help us live fully in the present moment where all life has always happened. And, living fully, hopefully, too, we can live with compassion and wisdom. In fact, I'm not at all sure we can act with compassion and wisdom unless we are fully present.

So, on to the two-verse Haiku:





Something I should know.
Forever is always now.
No past. No future.


Something I should know.
The Law of Karma applies
All thoughts, words, deeds, weigh.

Haiku

Something I should know—

Forever is always now.

No past. No Future.

—Dan Gurney

Haiku

Quite often the day's

Most blissful moments arise

In meditation.

 

The birds have vanished into the sky,

and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

—Li Po 

(aka Li Bai and Li Bo, the Taoist poet)