publishing poetry chapbooks
 


Monday's Poem
photo: Pat Brown

I've been reading and writing haiku of one form or another for
about fifty years now, enjoying the classic and the modern versions. In fact, my latest book, a penny in the grass issued in late February by Ekstasis Editions (Victoria, BC), is a collection of 170 ku from the mid-1960s on. Here are some others—three fairly straight forward pieces ("counting" "the heron" "these white leaves") along with a couple of two-liners ("bull-rushes" and "some spaces"), a riff on a Japanese original (Basho's "hana no kuma," one of his cherry blossom haiku), and my own little resurrection riff, the "phoenix" tanka.




© Allan Brown


counting
the last of these dew drops—
the early sun



the heron—
the different green
of trees & reeds



these white leaves
against the window pane—
rising wind



bull-rushes leaning
out of the crowded ditch



some spaces still between
the trees & the sky



carefully counting
all of these blossoms—
counting again
[after Basho]



a phoenix?
OK, but
does it have to leave
its ashes
in my garden?