Preserve Your Memories...Oriental Style

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While this verse of mine gives the traditional season indication, that is one of the more technical requirements which may be disregarded. The three dashes at the end of the second line indicate a slight swerving of thought. These may be placed wherever needed in the verse, as here:

This sunset was done

At day's end---by an artist

With a dirty brush.

Or:

Ginko trees today--

Have let their halos slip down

Around their wet feet.

I started my personal haiku jotting habit years ago to preserve hiking memories along the Appalachian Trail. Then, in 1960, I bought "Small Comfort" (four country acres with a sevenroom farmhouse just outside Harpers Ferry, West Virginia) for my retirement home and, of course, immediately started writing haiku about it. The first recorded memory of my country place runs:

The sun is setting-- Perching

for one bright moment

In my cedar tree.

Now, at 76, I live in town . . . and the new owners of "Small Comfort" have cut down the cedar tree. But because of these few words, I still have a lasting joy renewed at will ... just as I can renew others. For instance: The sky over "Small Comfort" was often marked by jet trails.

High in the blue sky

Jets underline their flights in white--

At sunset, in pink.

As my retirement day approached, the weekend rides between the farm and Washington, D.C. became a time of garden watching:

The brow of a hill--

Wearing a comb of cornrows,

Has a tidy look.

Foreign to nature--

Sharply rectangular bales

Clutter smooth hayfields.

Although it's not necessary, sometimes you may want to award a title to a haiku in order to give the poem more meaning:

HIT AND RUN

Evening plane, reckless,

Cuts the tarnished moon in two--

And keeps on flying.

WHODUNIT?

Who killed Cock Robin?

I blamed my cat until clue--

Blood on windowpane.

COLD SNAP

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