More Haiku
by Lionel E. Deimel
 Bath
The tub fills quickly.
Steam rises from the water.
The bath is ready.
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 Crash
The box is silent.
My computer’s heart is stilled.
Loneliness grips me.
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| The poems above are some of my first haiku efforts. Again, I
was not bound by the traditional subjects. (Written some time in 1996.) |
 DST
Clocks are set forward,
But we do not ask where goes
The daylight we save.
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| This poem was written on April 1, 2001, after a trip
around the house to reset all the clocks. |
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Early Spring
The garden’s snowless.
Crocuses through warm soil peek.
March begins next week.
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Relapse
The snow has returned.
The drifts blow midst bitter cold.
March is two days old.
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| “Early Spring” and “Relapse” go together, of
course. The former was written during a record-breaking February warm spell, and
the latter was written in anticipation of the other shoe’s dropping. The
rhyme, which developed by accident, makes the poems seem more occidental.
(Written February 2000.) |
 Smoke
Smoke, an indoor curse,
Banished now to aid our health.
Outdoor smoke a bane. |
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| As a non-smoker, I have been delighted as
smoking has been banished from more and more places. Although indoor air
is generally much improved, regulation has driven smokers outdoors.
Entering or exiting a building now often involves navigating a gauntlet
of smokers and the foul air surrounding them. (Written November 2001.) |
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Winter Wood
Evergreen mid brown:
Trunks and branches monochrome.
Still, I see no deer.
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| Suburban Pittsburgh harbors many small
patches of wood. Deer sometimes emerge from these, possibly to forage,
possibly to travel to a nearby wooded area. Even in winter, when most of
the trees have shed their leaves, I almost never see deer when I look into the
wood from the sidewalk. This haiku, more traditional in its construction
than other poems I have written in this form, was composed in December
2001. It does seems a bit self-conscious, however. |
Cardinal
Gray December day;
Red cardinal on bare tree,
Eying my feeder. |
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| I have an active bird feeder on my deck.
Because the back yard drops off sharply, when I look out the kitchen
window, I see the feeder and the tops of nearby trees. On the day I
wrote this, I looked past my feeder and the birds eating there, and I saw a lone
male cardinal staring in my direction from a branch of a bare tree . By the
way, only after I had written the poem did I remember that it was no
longer December. (Written 1/2/2002.) |
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Stump
A tall stump remains;
Foot-long shoots sprout near its top.
Life is tenacious. |
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| This poem was inspired by the same tract that
led to “Winter Wood.” A tree near the sidewalk had been cut,
leaving a stump perhaps 2-1/2 feet high. The tree was not about to
give up its hold on life. (Written 5/1/2002.) |
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Mid-April
Middle of April:
Overcast, with rain and snow;
What do groundhogs know? |
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| On Groundhog Day 2007, Punxsutawney Phil did
not see his shadow, supposedly a harbinger of an early spring. On April
17, 2007, however, when I wrote this poem, it was cold and damp in
Pittsburgh, and storms had just brought flooding and snow to the
Atlantic coast. On Easter, just over a week before, it had snowed in
Pittsburgh. This poem is related in spirit to “Early Spring” and
“Relapse,” above. Although it was not intentional, the rhyme in
“Mid-April” mirrors that in the earlier poems.
Page last modified
April 17, 2007 |
   
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