Better Than Starbucks!

Haiku’s subject matter is wide open and non-judgmental.  There are no appropriate or non-appropriate topics.  Typically, haiku journals abound with moonlit pine branches, the cry of the osprey, dragonflies perched on bamboo shoots, and the reflection of stars in a pond.  But a  poem could as readily address maggots wriggling in a trash heap as evening rain glistening on a banana leaf.  In Zen terms, all phenomena are empty, empty of inherent self-existence, and, therefore all phenomena are equal.

               Fat maggots wriggle

               On the open trash can’s lid:

               Late afternoon light.

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I’d arrived home from work the afternoon of a garbage collection day.  Trash barrels were lined up at the end of driveways in the residential driveway.  Observe the maggots mindfully, with no aesthetic preference.

This tradition of seeing beauty in the decaying and in conditions that might to some be repulsive runs throughout Japanese classical haiku.  Here is a piece from Matsuo Basho, considered the most masterful of all that nation’s poets.  Note the R.H. Blyth translation does not artificially attempt to translate the piece using the accepted 5-7-5 syllable format.

 

               Fleas, lice,

               The horse pissing,

               Near my pillow.

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And here is an offering from Issa, another poet revered in Japan.

 

              Poor louse!

              I made it creep upon the fruit,

             That tastes of my flesh.

 

“But with a little more familiarity, you realize that haiku poetry excels in one of the rarest artistic virtues, the virtue of knowing when to stop.”      -Alan Watts

 

One more haiku, this to celebrate Taoist appreciation of Autumn.

 

              Autumn equinox,

              Balance between light and dark:

              A blue dragonfly.

 

                 -K. McL