The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills

This is a small watercolor landscape that I started in watercolor class last spring and liked too well to finish. It seems to go with the Bukowski title above.That book was one of the first books of poetry I read when I was just beginning to write. I liked it a lot. I think it "waterproofed" me against anything too sweet in a poem. And the days DO run away, I am in an odd mood, because I just peeled an orange and put the peeling in the disposall. And it won't turn on. I have pushed the reset button and nothing. Next step, the dread electrical panel in the basement. But the blog must come first!

Well, today we got the TV working. We thought while we were doing it that someone was shooting in the woods. But coming into another room, we can see fireworks to the east, so someone is just not waiting until the Fourth. Our Fourth is very quiet now, but I hope to go to the parade in Alanson this year. I always love to look at the little kids.

Here are a few of Raymond Roseliep's haiku. He was one of the first acknowledged masters of the form in English. I have just chanced upon some of his (pages 213-215) in the book, One Hundred Frogs; from renga to haiku to English by Hiroaki Sato. I read much of this book many years ago (it was published in 1983) but just this week got my own copy. I had forgotten the scope and sweep of it. Mr. Sato takes us through the history of Japanese poetry from its beginnings modeled on Chinese poetry, through court tanka, through group-written  renga, then into the hokku being separated from the position of the beginning verse in a renga and becoming haiku, which stands alone. like the cheese in the children's circle singing game. Then haiku began to be written in other languages than Japanese. Mr. Sato includes a good sampling of these in English in the book. It's a nice journey and I am glad to be taking it again, after studying haiku for thirty years.

blues are the big thing

with Monet,  she said,

spreading the Roquefort

he removes his glove

to point out

                             Orion

spring breeze

puffs through the skeleton

of a bird

walking in rain

I pass a stranger

          I know

the farmer talks corn

pointing where the corn

is talking

trees unleaf;

my mother

grows smaller

All haiku by Raymond Roseliep (1917-1983)