3 Poems About Death No visitors allowed– but he speaks cheerfully to the dead who stop by Ashes in the river, name carved on a rock– you have stayed and gone Your blood on my hand– I'm afraid to wash it, but it still fades away
Tag: haiku
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3 Poems About Death
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Untitled (2016 Haiku Project)
I wrote a long intro for this one, so if you’d like to skip down to the haiku, just click here. All I’ll say is: haiku are short, but read them slowly. I have put extra space between each one to try to give that sense of space and taking things slow!
In 2016, I was living in Plymouth, Wisconsin. And one of the good things about living in downtown Plymouth was the fact that the Plymouth Arts Center was within easy walking distance. In March of 2016, they had an exhibit of six Wisconsin photographers called Painting With Light…many ways, and I loved it. And something about the photographs made me want to write in a spare, imagistic style, so I spent the duration of that exhibit repeatedly walking down there, sitting in the exhibit space, and writing these haiku (although a few are from the walk there or back as well). A little more information on the exhibit can be found in this old Sheboygan Press article I tracked down with a little help from the kind folks at the PAC.
I also wanted to talk a little bit about what I mean when I say “haiku.” They are not in any strict formula of syllables; I believe that translating a poem into a different language is, if you want to be simply literal, impossible; you are really creating something new. And I believe the same thing is true of translating a poetic form from one language to another.
So what I have below are poems that are in three brief lines, and my goals in this form are trying to write as simply as possible, cutting out whatever is unnecessary, and being as absolutely spare as possible. If the haiku is complete, what should be left is the image; if it is good, what is left is an image that you spend time with. I suppose it is similar to my feelings on photography and why they inspired me in this way. And I will end by saying that there is some joy, as a poet, in considering so minutely each word, on weighing questions of capitalization, on turning a narrowed eye on each punctuation mark; perhaps the same satisfaction that people who work in miniature feel in any art or craft.
why make resolutions? now, everything new is buried by snow. the clouds reflections of clouds both leave us behind the slow river wears away the rock– nothing is still colorless winter– the world as simple as a photograph these rock pillars– are they giants' teeth or dirty fingernails? a flower decaying keeps a terrible beauty around the solid rocks the river, gurgling between fishermen's legs spring tulips bend with the wind– break under my hand in a photograph, train tracks lead nowhere lonely tree, climb down from those rocks– I will sit under you scattered lilies fall apart petal by petal icy trees by a clear lake– the end of winter in the museum, each glass-covered photograph reflects my face Moon, I am also here alone the church doors locked! a no loitering sign outside the museum. farther, trees fade into forest, clouds into sky how many hermit caves in these cliffs, how many empty skulls? on the highest branch, that smug crow is free to make noise the snow is creeping down the mountains soon, winter is here solitary, twisting tree– can't decide which direction to reach out at dusk in the distance the cloud-mountains appear not a shivering songbird locked inside my ribs but a black crow, laughing drunk he fell off the bridge and landed in the stars
