Haiku – Page 6 – SALT CITY VERSE

Beginning

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by artist and poet, Michelle Kogan, HERE. Stop by and check out what she has for us this week. Thank you Michelle for hosting!

First of all, the tragic school shooting has to be acknowledged. I’m praying for those families that are experiencing the unimaginable, for the children crying for their lost friends.

This week, on and off at my computer, I have been thinking about beginnings. After all, 2022 is about to begin and none too soon.

The calendar, of course, is totally empty. There is no choice but to arrive at January and see what will happen when we get there. Everything has a beginning. New Years Day is my favorite day of the year because it’s a beginning and I am always hopeful.

New buds on branches
Full moon rises in the sky
our calendar world. 

© Janice Scully 2021

I have been writing poems on the prompt “beginnings” for a submission to an on-line journal. Human beings are always beginning something, and maybe children have even more beginnings in their daily life. I don’t know but it seems they must. But adults have more begin agains.

I didn’t submit this poem. I revised it this morning and thought it might speak to teachers.

BEGINNER


Once, you didn’t know

how to read.

but you 

            learned words,

            turned pages.


One new word

led to another

            and soon you read

            sentences. 


Which led to reading 

your first book

and the next,

              which is how it is

              for everyone.


At the beginning 

is where everyone

              In the whole world
  
              begins. 

© Janice Scully 2021

I hope you find hope and joy in your week. Begin or begin again a few books.

Lastly, I have had good news this week. A short non-fiction essay I wrote from my childhood entitled SWIMMING TO PENNSYLVANIA, was published on line at RavensPerch.com here. I was thrilled. The piece began as a monologue for my playwriting group, but I turned it into an essay.

Thank you, Michelle, for hosting.

Remembering Diptheria

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Catherine HERE. Thank you, Catherine for hosting! Be sure to stop by to see what she has for us this week.

What is Poetry Friday? Find out more about it HERE.

Today’s Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis vaccines given together

The hesitancy surrounding the Corona Virus vaccine is discouraging as is the lack of understanding and respect towards our public health officials who are trying to get America well and out of our hospitals. No one wants to be in the ICU, but too many people end up there when they could have been vaccinated and out and about living their lives.

Trees wave in a breeze,
sunshine, blue sky, stars at night--
viewed from ICUs.
Nurses put in overtime.
Sick patients lay bewildered.

© Janice Scully 2021

So now is a good time to ponder the past.

In the October issue of Smithsonian Magazine is an article entitled “The Plague Among Children” by Dr. Perri Klass, who recently wrote a book entitled HOW SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH GAVE CHILDREN A FUTURE.

No one today remembers when Diphtheria was a plague in the United States. But in 1735, Noah Webster wrote, that from a town in New Hampshire, the disease “Gradually travelled southward, almost stripping the country of children . . . Many families lost three or four children–many lost all.”

Children quiet, hands still,
whole families playing no more--
Diphtheria struck.

© Janice Scully 2021

“Throat Distemper” as Diphtheria was called, created a thick crust in the throat of children and slowly suffocated them as parents watched.

Having seen this horror, one day in 1894, there was shouting and applause, hats tossed in the air at a convention of Doctors in Budapest. Dr. Roux had presented certain research findings: the discovery of an antitoxin that could save the lives of children with Diphtheria! It wasn’t a vaccine, but a treatment that saved a high percentage of children.

A vaccine was later developed that would stimulate in children antibody formation against the disease toxin and totally prevent the disease.

Diphtheria was essentially eradicated in America and those who created it were celebrated. Most doctors today have never seen a patient with diphtheria, but as of 2017, children in war-torn countries such as Yemen who are who not are getting preventive health care and vaccination, die from this disease.

The scientists who, through painstaking work, developed vaccines that prevent horrible suffering and death, need to be remembered. They need to be thanked. Gratitude for those to those who risked their own lives fighting disease is appropriate. Dr. Fauci lived through several epidemics and should be listened to.

Young people today have been educated by the pandemic. I hope they might be inspired by their experience to study science and public health. I know some will.

We eat sleep and work
as if the past never was--
Leaves fall then winter.

© Janice Scully 2021

Have a great day. Stay well. May everyone get vaccinated.

Spring Haiku and a Touch of History

Welcome to Poetry Friday, hosted today at Jama’s Alphabet Soup. Thank you, Jama for hosting! Stop by and see what she has in store for us!

Spring is coming to Central New York and below are two haiku inspired by this amazing season. I love the magic of early spring, who doesn’t? I love when trees come to life, before they are even full enough to cast shade. I think we can use all the beauty we can find, and these images are small bits.

And Another:

I rarely have enough flowers outside to cut and bring indoors, but this spring the daffodils seemed to explode. So I picked some. I love how they arrange themselves as they lean together in a glass.

Now for some history in the midst of National Poetry Month. As you might know, I live just outside of Syracuse, New York and have always been fascinated by “Salt City” history. During the 19th Century, Syracuse was the main suppler of salt for much of the United States. It supplied the Union Army during the Civil War. Commerce was aided, of course by the Erie Canal, which was funded, to a large extent by Syracuse Salt.

Though parts of the canal still exists outside the city, the canal seen here has been filled in to become Erie Boulevard. Many think it would have been amazing if that part of the canal still existed.

SALT CITY ON THE ERIE CANAL 
 
 A boat bumps up to a dock
 with the thud of ropes 
 

 and gritty canal water
 slaps the wooden sides and shakes
 

 sleeping passengers.
 They’ve arrived in Syracuse,
 

 at the bustling era 
 of Syracuse Salt,
 

 before the railroads took over,
 before midwest mines
 

 stole all their business,
 before the canal was filled in with dirt
 

 and Model T Fords replaced 
 canal boats. 

© Janice Scully 2021

Be sure to check out what Jama has for us and may spring bring at least a few peaceful moments to us all. Thank you, Jama.

ONE HAIKU ON MAKING PITA BREAD

Welcome to Poetry Friday! Thank you, Susan Bruck, for hosting here at Soul Blossom Living.

I’ve kept busy this week revising work. I’ve also been reading Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. I’ve never read them cover to cover. Twain writes characters with heart breaking humanity. For instance, Twain Huck is unable to be “good” and turn in Jim, an escaped slave, to authorities. He knows if he were a well bred boy and had good character, he would. Twain shows us through character, how slavery corrupted American society. Through his work, we can gain insight into how we became the America we are today.

For an adventure, I baked this week. I have always wanted to make pita bread, and I was surprisingly successful. I read the directions carefully and found it wasn’t that hard. They were crisp and tasty and I surprised my neighbor from Lebanon with some. I used the recipe in my old Fanny Farmer Baking Book, but there are many good recipes on line. Here’s one.

Here are the pita before their plunge into a 500 degree oven . . .

and after.

I wrote a haiku about what I learned about pita:

 Two to three minutes
 
 it takes to bake pita bread-

 same as the sun rise.  

©Janice Scully 2021

I hope you all are well. Have a good weekend.

Last Minute Haiku

Welcome to Poetry Friday, the coming of Spring edition. Heidi Mordhorst, at My Juicy Little Universe, is hosting HERE. Be sure to stop by to see what poems she is sharing this week.

Spring is coming to Central New York and everything seems imbued with new hope. They are lowering the age for vaccines and people are lining up. I don’t think it’s too wishful to believe that as time goes on more and more people everwhere will agree to take it.

Today, I waited for a LaMiPoFri to come to me as I stared out my living room window at the early spring colors, mostly brown, but some green. I noticed my husband left a ladder by the porch.

MARCH RITUAL

Wood ladder among

the hemlocks and melting snow–

Christmas lights come down.

©Janice Scully 2021

Then another was inspired by old dry leaves that never fell.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Dry crispy leaves shake

in spring — as xylems hoist sap

upward to new buds.

©Janice Scully 2021

THE BOTTICELLIAN TREES, by William Carlos Williams, provides images of trees changing in spring. Trees/ alphabet metaphor to me was unusual. It’s a lovely poem. Below is the beginning, and the rest HERE

THE BOTTICELLIAN TREES

The Alphabet of 
the trees

is fading in the
song of the leaves

the crossing
bars of the thin

letters that spelled
winter

and the cold
have been illuminated

with 
pointed green

by the rain and sun--

I hope everyone is well and enjoying the first days of spring, at least they are the first days in Central New York.

A small tree in my front yard

Welcome 2021!

It’s Poetry Friday and my thanks to Sylvia Vardell for hosting at POETRY FOR CHILDREN. There you will find a wonderful and useful sneak preview of 2021 poetry books for kids.

It’s been a long few days. But I was thrilled to receive some lovely New Year postcards, a yearly event on Poetry Friday. Thank you Jone Rush Macculloch for organizing this. The result is that I received some gorgeous photos adorned with joyful poetry .

The following card and haiku by Mary Lee Hahn filled me with hope, perfect for New Years.

recently minted

shiny coin of here and now

ready to be spent

Carol Varsalona’s card reads like an invitation:

Upon the lake

silverdrops dance

as a new year arises.

breath in winter’s freshness.

exhale earth’s frostbitten bite.

Evolve!

The haiku on Jone’s card held a haunting moon and a haiku in Irish (I think), translated into English on the back.

first full moon

makes poetry wishes

happy new year

This lovely bookmark created by Linda Mitchel had a poem on the back celebrating the year of the ox.

Here’s a haiku from me this week:

cardinal hunting

frozen seeds under a hedge–

crow on icy bough

My thoughts have been with the thousands of people who have been dying everyday with the Coronavirus. It breaks my heart. So much unnecessary suffering. God bless them and their families.

A Peaceful Lake for a Tumultuous Time

Today is Poetry Friday and Robyn Hood Black is hosting at Life on the Deckle Edge. Be sure to stop by to see what she has in store for us. Thank you, Robyn, for hosting! I hope everyone is healthy and safe.

When I feel agitated, as I have been this week by yet more over-the-top political chaos, it helps to go outside and find peace in nature. Yesterday my husband and I went to a favorite place called Green Lake, a “meromictic” lake that is always a deep blue-green. It is protected by trees and so is usually calm, with trees and sky reflected photographically in its surface. The lake is 195 feet deep, created by a glacier long ago in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

What is a meromictic lake?

Briefly, it is a lake of three layers that never mix. Compared to the top surface layer, the bottom layer has a low oxygen content, a high salt content, and little light. A middle layer separates the two extremes. Depending on the oxygen, light and salt content, different organisms survive in the the three layers.

Most lakes, the great majority, are “holomictic” meaning that its surface and deep waters mix at least once a year. Meromictic lakes don’t mix because they are deep, have steep sides, and because the bottom waters are heavier, with salt. The Black Sea is the largest meromictic lake in the world.

I was there on a perfect fall day. The brighter leaves have fallen from trees around the lake, replaced by brown and rust colors. Beautiful changes. Here’s a haiku I wrote to share today.

Meromictic lake--
like neighbors in a highrise
its waters find peace.

Our hike around the lake was peaceful as I hope our country will be, at least relative to recent times, soon.

Have a wonderful day and weekend. I hope you all find peace wherever you go.

Thanks again, Robyn Hood Black, for hosting!

Three Bird Haiku

Thank you, Linda Baie, for hosting Poetry Friday. Don’t forget to stop by TeacherDance and see what’s on Linda’s mind this week.

It’s the anxious time. States are trying to vote safely and struggling with the virus. I am trying to come up with small and more distant ways to acknowledge loved ones this holiday season. It’s just the way it is. We have to accept it.

For this post, I dusted off three bird haiku. This first one was chosen as one of the poems to be paired with an artist for the SYRACUSE POSTER PROJECT in 2013. Artist Carolyn Glavin, a student at Syracuse University at the time, illustrated it, which I thought was perfect. The photo doesn’t do the artist justice, but it’s a charming painting that I cherish.

cardinal, feathered
masked bandit on a snowy 
limb--all can see you

Here are two more haiku featuring birds:

the black white and red
woodpecker pecks a metal
pipe--he doesn't know.

a sudden robin
among the forsythia--
orange in yellow light

Thinking about birds this morning has taken my mind off the election for a short time. Out my window I see bright orange and yellow leaves which brightens an otherwise cloudy damp day.

To close, Happy Halloween 2020! I just read Lee Bennett Hopkin’s 1993 anthology RAGGED SHADOWS to celebrate. Inside these covers, as many teachers probably already know, are wonderfully eerie Halloween poems by legendary poets such as Karla Kuskin and Eileen Fisher and Valerie Worth.

Enjoy the weekend and be sure to stop by TeacherDance for more Poetry Friday inspiration with Linda Baie.

Present Tense

It’s Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the talented Carol Valsalona on her blog, Beyond Literacy. Make sure you stop by and check out what she has in store this week. Thank you, Carol.

Two weeks ago, Carol made a request:

Poetry Friday Friends:
If so inclined, please share a new image poem on the topic, Summer 2020 in the Midst of Quarantine Life, at your blog for the September 4, 2020 Poetry Friday that I am hosting.  It will be a way to showcase the beauty of nature during trying times.

I have been celebrating the beauty of summer this week in my kitchen. With all the sun and rain in Syracuse, my generous neighbor’s garden has exploded with vegetables, especially tomatoes. It’s been a bright spot during the pandemic at my house.

I think this qualifies as an image that celebrates the beauty of nature, don’t you? I was indeed inundated, as the tomatoes were ripe and many could not wait to be cooked. Spaghetti and meat balls anyone?

Of course summer seems sweet partly because, at least where I live, it ends. I’ve been feeling nostalgic. A week of chilly weather, it seems as if summer never happened. This idea inspired this:

PRESENT TENSE


After a week,
cool air on bare arms.
The sharp flap of wind gusts
in street awnings.
Clouds linger, the sun
too weak to chase them.

You can't seem to remember summer.
 
Months later, you notice
the sprinkle of
white on trees. The black glare
on sidewalks,
breath turns to mist
as the world
starts to freeze

and it's like a dream, the time
before you moved on from fall,
and into your winter clothes
but you did.





© Janice Scully

Enjoy your weekend. I haven’t mentioned here all the disturbing things that are going on in America, but my thoughts and prayers are with Black Lives Matter, with those who are ill, with the scientists who are working to defeat Covid, and with the Joe Biden campaign.

Be sure to visit Carol’s blog, Beyond Literacy!

If you want to know more about Poetry Friday, it’s here.

Briefly, about Haiku

It’s Poetry Friday, today hosted by the amazing Laura Purdie Salas. Let’s see what she has in store for us this week. I hope everyone is well as we get through each new week which fly by. My thoughts are with all the teachers and students trying to get back to their important work.

Just for fun and interest I entered the 2020 Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Contest, not that I thought I would ever win or place and did not. The winners were recently announced here, chosen from over 2,000 haiku entries. It was the eight annual contest run by The Heron’s Nest, an on-line haiku quarterly journal that welcomes submissions. In the above link, the editors shared the winning haiku and honorable mentions and described in detail why they are chosen. It’s well worth reading if you have an interest in haiku and it made me think about this popular form.

Though I write them on occasional I still know too little about haiku as an art form. I did know that classically, haiku is a three line poem originating in Japan with a 5-7-5 syllabic count, though some haiku poets veer from this. The number of syllables varies. I found the syllabic limitations useful and fun when I set out several years ago to create snapshots of historical figures, such as John Q. Addams, the first president to ever be photographed:

JOHN Q. ADDAMS

An early morning
skinny-dipper! A darn shame
shutter bugs missed that.

© Janice Scully

We could use someone interesting and innovative today, like you, JQ!

Classically, within the 17 syllable format, the haiku was often divided into two parts, that contrast in tone. An example given was this, written by Issa:

Look at the warbler-
he's wiping his muddy feet
all over the plum blossoms.

I think the shift in tone here is between the lovely image conjured by the warbler contrasting with his muddy feet on the plum blossoms.

Beside contrast in tone within the poem, the other classic haiku characteristic is the “kigo”, or seasonal word, which gives the reader a sense of, or course, the season. In the above haiku I see plum blossoms, a warbler, and mud . . . I guess spring.

According to Lowenstein, optimistic SPRING is often implied by “cherry blossoms and certain birds.

The bright exhausting SUMMER is implied by “flower and tree words.”

AUTUMN is “melancholy” and expressed images such as a “full moon, wind and dying leaves.”

Words like “snow” might signify a cold and difficult WINTER.

On The Heron’s Nest’s website submission page they post a list of qualities these contemporary editors look for when evaluating haiku. These do seem to take their cue from classic haiku.

Present moment magnified (immediacy of emotion)
Interpenetrating the source of inspiration (no space between observer and observed)
Simple, uncomplicated images
Common language
Finding the extraordinary in “ordinary” things
Implication through objective presentation, not explanation: appeal to intuition, not intellect
Human presence is fine if presented as an archetypical, harmonious part of nature (human nature should blend in with the rest of nature rather than dominate the forefront)
Humor is fine, if in keeping with “karumi” (lightness) – nothing overly clever, cynical, comic, or raucous
Musical sensitivity to language (effective use of rhythm and lyricism)
Feeling of a particular place within the cycle of seasons

So much to think about in writing such a brief poem. Haiku can feel to me to be inscrutable, though fascinating and worth the effort. Here are a few from the Japanese masters:

On a withered branch
a crow has settled.
Nightfall in autumn.

Bashō (1644-94)


Wandering through a stream
in summer, carrying my sandals.
How delightful!

Buson (1715-83)


Is that crow tilling
the field or just
walking around there?

Issa (1762-1826)


After I'm dead, tell people
I was a persimmon eater
who also loved haiku.

Shiki (1867-1902)

I hope you liked these. Have a great day and take time off from our troubled world, perhaps, and write a few haiku. Maybe it will provide a small respite.