Posted Sunday 20 April 2003

Annelie's Haiku

Denton, Texas, Spring 1965. It is perhaps 2 a.m. at my job at the Holiday Inn. I have been given a tiny book by Annelie W., an attractive and somewhat zoftig girl from my statistics class. My work complete, the lobby empty, I am reading this book now, a book of Haiku poetry.

Annelie. If I had been smarter- But let that pass. Any college girl who wears leopard-spot pants, and gets away with it ... any college girl who, learning I'd never had a bagle and had never heard of lox, brought an entire picnic to my apartment ... Well. So many missed opportunities in a life. A pity they are so clear, later.

This Haiku.

Now this was a revelation. A poem ... that didn't have to rhyme! A form far simpler than iambic pentameter. Shelly and Keats in my thick English books had nothing on these japanese guys. Both simple and elusive, all at once.

I thought I'd try it.

But what? I needed a subject! I saw nothing in the lobby. Aha! Nature! I decided to go outside.

It was cold. I looked around. Cars parked between white-painted lines, the double row of Holiday Inn rooms. Everything quiet. Then I looked up.

Now, as I gaze up,
the silver-tipped moon-crescent,
spikes the sky into place.

There. Who could forget such a moment?