One last call for readers outside the United States . . . send in your quarantine haikus! I’ve gotten two so far and will post those tomorrow. Would love to have more! Post here as a comment or email me at thepoemelf@gmail.com.
Brenda Loew of Seattle sent in pictures and haiku. The pictures of are herself and the Seattle bridge troll, outfitted to reduce community spread:
I did not know this wonderful sculpture existed. Mr. Troll sits under a bridge, as trolls do, and in his left hand clutches a Volkswagen bug.
Here’s Brenda’s haiku. Lovely!
The walking people,
quiet pandemonium,
all humans stopped cold.
Sci-fi cityscape,
masked and gloved Seattleites
smile only with eyes.
Equally plagued,
we see how we are truly
more alike than different
What is our true face?
Sheltering now at home,
spring robin singing.
And her lovely face
*
Nurse Pam Sheen (bless you!), solicited haikus from friends and sent in these:
Dog glued to my side
Unsure why we’re both at home
But grateful we are
Trees green, sunshine bright
The house warm and cozy too
Like beacons of hope
—Jenn Van Osdel
We’re inside monkeys
Climbing walls won’t get us out
Where’s my banana?
—James Lachowsky
Inside monkeys, tru dat.
*
Finally (for today) from my sister Susie in Massachusetts (wife of yesterday’s haiku writer Richard, far away in San Diego):
I have haikus to post today and tomorrow, and that will be the end of this project . . . unless. . . my international readers step up! Sending out a challenge to Poem Elf readers in countries outside of the United States to send in a quarantine haiku. I know you’re there, I see you.
*
Tom McGrath, a new grandfather from Chicago, sends in a vision of dreamy peace:
Haiku for Emilio Tomas
A newborn slumbers
limp against this grandpa’s chest,
a lion at rest.
Tom adds that the original final line was “big sister pokes him.” Two completely different poems! I like both.
*
From her quarantine in downtown Baltimore, Trish Rawlings muses on what she found on the ground outside the grocery store:
White latex gloves dropped
Rudely on the lot up close
Are not: pale blossoms.
(What she thought were a shopper’s protective gear was actually blossoms from a shedding tree. Would that all nasty sights turn out to be blossoms!)
*
My brother-in-law Richard has temporarily re-located from Massachusetts to California to help care for his little grandsons as his daughter-in-law recovers from health issues. (Yes, he is that great a human!) Being so far from his wife, he thought about other separations, including mine from my daughters (we are literally thousands of miles apart and will be for the foreseeable future), and he came up with this, which ends with classic New England stoicism and a signature Bostonian phrase:
Haiku from San Diego
Daughters coming home Squeeze is what we want to do Fa’ get about it
*
Benedikt Rochow, an engineer from Alabama, took a break from working at home to come up with this—
A man a plan a
canal Panama really
is a palindrome.
*
Last one. I’ve been reading a lot of essays about how this virus is helping us get back to our core selves, our shared humanity, the things that truly matter. Marge from Chicago says the same in her haiku:
Corona’d we are Self-starters we have become Reliant on God
*
Thanks, everyone! More tomorrow.
**APOLOGIES FOR THE BAD SPACING FOR THE LAST TWO HAIKUS. I HAVE TRIED TO FIX IT AND AM UNABLE TO!
Welcome to the third installment of readers’ quarantine haiku. Thank you for sending in these gems. I love them.
(Reminder: if yours hasn’t been posted yet, wait a day or so, I’ll get to it. And keep them coming!)
Let’s start with flowers because . . . flowers! After winter, flowers. What a marvelous event.
Sharon Carey sends in this
Springtime violas
uplift stone cold riprap spirits
Johnny jump ups cheer somber days
In case you, like me, don’t know what a Johnny jump up is—
Judith Berger, herbalist, sends greetings from Manhattan:
Outside my window,
waxwing in the Juniper.
She too wears a mask.
Who knew this little project would be such an education? Here’s a waxwing in a juniper bush:
My sister Mary K. wrote one we can all relate to:
Stationery bike
Attempting to stay in shape
Food and wine negate
My grand-nephew Charlie Greco, age 9, made a PSA haiku. Simple, sober and to the point. Thanks, Charlie!
coronavirus
it is horrible for you
wash your hands please, thanks!
Last ones for the day are from my friend Michelle of Chicago.
[Explanation needed: weeks and weeks ago which feels more like a lifetime ago, we met in Maui (I cringe at the Marie-Antoinette tone of that phrase, but it is what it is, and it’s relevant). In the airport restroom we spoke with a woman who had just come back from the little island of Molokai, once home to lepers. She enchanted us. Tall, willowy, gray-haired, dressed in safari-type clothes, a big smiler—also a widow who had buried her native-born Kauai husband on his home island years before. We wanted to know more about her—really I wanted to be her best friend—so we stalked her. Tracked her down in the airport restaurant to see who she was with.]
(Please note: If you sent in a haiku and you haven’t seen it here yet, have patience! I have an abundance of haiku which is so much nicer than an abundance of caution.)
Here’s a lovely dose of spring from Patti Russo of Bloomington, Indiana (a perfectly-named town for the season):
Sunshine on a stick Immune from fear or worry Spring forsythia
Patti must have an abundance of creativity because she sent two haikus. Here’s the other:
To want a dog’s life Not just any dog’s..this one’s The smile says it all!
Brenda Loew sent these lovelies:
Where are the two leggeds now?!? the crows are wondering… the world is so still.
And her second, a timely reminder of our need for human contact, whatever form it takes
Dying is not difficult. Not having good Friends, a Hell realm indeed.
My daughter Lizzie, a nurse in northern Michigan, sent a few. Her work brings back memories of long ago when we sat at the kitchen table and wrote haikus inspired by art postcards.
As of late although
Surfaces are suspicious
All has been wiped clean
and here’s one about delayed affection in the age of coronavirus
Just six feet away
You laugh and stand there smiling
I will hug you soon
My sister Ceci is using her quarantine time to clean out her basement. My sisters and I tease her that she has forever been cleaning out her basement. A good reason to disappear downstairs, I suppose. Anyway, here’s her Marie-Kondo-inspired haikus:
Cards and photographs
Fond memories abounding
Life in the basement!
And this one, presumably written before she found her way to the basement
Empty calendar
Days to fill and time to spare
For long lost projects!
Ceci’s friend Marge sent one too (both live in Deerfield, Illinois and miss playing tennis):
Fewer body aches
Could it be no more tennis?
Aching joints ok
Finally, for today, another dog haiku from Monica Bailey in Florida. She included a picture of her cute little friend Lilly:
Thank you to everyone who sent in a haiku! Can’t tell you how much I enjoy reading them. It’s a balm for my nervous system. The creative spirit is fundamental to us humans and strengthens our connections!
Up first from Jeanette, who gets extra credit for taking a picture:
(Jeanette has a very droll sense of humor and I am laughing at “safe connection.”)
Extra credit too for Truus Visser whose native language is Dutch. A lot said here, very artfully:
deep-orange sky birds fill in the silence handsoap foams fragrant
Here from Nancy Murphy, mother of four, a positive spin on quarantine:
Games, puzzles unearthed Joyful sounds, parents exhale Family renewed
Nancy adds, “Please note that my poem is in no way intended to make light of the seriousness of the virus and its consequences. Hope we all get through this ok.”
And from Michigan resident Gail Haffey, gardener extraordinaire:
I am in need of distraction, I find myself saying, and how nice!, distraction is everywhere— funny animal videos, show-me-your-dance-moves Instagram accounts (shout-out to my daughters), clips of Italian mayors shouting at their constituents who won’t stay home.
So here’s a Poem Elf distraction. I’m inviting you to submit a Quarantine Haiku. You can also send me a picture of your haiku, Poem-Elf style. You can be in the picture or not. I’ll post as many as I can.
Email your haikus and/or photos to thepoemelf@gmail.com.
A brief tutorial on haikus (for better instruction, link here and scroll down):
Haikus have three lines, traditionally 5-7-5 syllables, but feel free to experiment. No one’s counting.
Start with an image (something you see, hear, taste, touch, smell) around you.
Keep it simple. Try not to get too metaphorical or flowery.
Haikus often contain an element of surprise or sudden understanding.
Your haiku can be silly, profound or mundane. Just not political, please. The point is to use the structure 5-7-5 to re-focus your thoughts away from anxiety and worries.
Just so you’re not self-conscious about submitting work that is mediocre or worse: first of all, it doesn’t matter. This is just supposed to be fun, communal and distracting.
Someone wrote on Twitter the other day that being in lockdown reminded her of being married. This little excerpt from Katherine Philips’ poem is for all those quarantined with a less-than-perfect housemate.
My own housemate is a dear. He is dear even as he follows me around with supportive words on hand washing, although sometimes I have to remind myself of how dear he is when he doesn’t follow me around with supportive words on hand washing.
Katherine Philips (1631/32 – 1664) was an English poet and translator. She was an intelligent child who read the Bible by the time she was four. Her father was a cloth merchant and had her educated at boarding school. She spoke several languages.
She was 16 when she married a Welsh landowner and member of Parliament. It was a strange match—he was 38 years older and the son of her mother’s second husband from another marriage. She and her husband (—cough—step-brother) had opposite political positions (her pro-royalist connections saved him from the executioner after King Charles II took the throne), but they seem to have been happy. Important to note that she wrote her sardonic anti-marriage poem in her early teens before she was married.
Still, her view of marriage seems jaundiced. When a friend remarried after widowhood, Philips wrote to her, “one may generally conclude the Marriage of a Friend to be the Funeral of a Friendship.”
Her husband encouraged her literary endeavors. She wrote over a hundred poems, many on the theme of female friendship which she wrote about in the tropes of courtly love. She translated and staged a play in London and Dublin, the first woman ever to have done so. She was the founder of the Society of Friendship, a literary group that wrote letters and poems to each other. Members of the group addressed each other with nicknames—hers was “The Matchless Orinda.”
She had two children. Her son died in infancy. She wrote his tombstone epitaph (in verse) and another poem, “On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips.” In spite of the elegant phraseology, a mother’s raw grief rips through—
Tears are my muse, and sorrow all my art,
So piercing groans must be thy elegy.
Those piercing groans. Wow. Lines like that remind me how we are the same in our suffering, century to century, country to country.
She died in her early thirties of smallpox.
For anyone on Instagram who needs a break from the gloom-and-doom of Covid-19 news, link here and sign up for Wake Up and Dance. Two of my daughters, one in Prague, one in northern Michigan, are collaborating on the videos. They’ll make you smile and maybe even dance yourself. (Instagram name if you’re having trouble with the link: @w.akeupanddance)
Thomas Lux’s “Poem in Thanks” is a good prayer for the self-described “spiritual but not religious,” all those people who call the woods their church and the birds their choir. Given modern distaste for high-holy formality and the corresponding love of irreverence, Lux has a big audience.
The speaker in the poem is on a retreat of sorts, trying to get work done or work things out. He’s holed up in the woods in an old cabin with an old blanket, a fire pit, and water from the creek. In other words, his basic needs are met. He has air to breathe, water, shelter, light, warmth and presumably food. For these he offers thanks, beginning and ending his prayer in less-than-ecclesiastical language:
Lord Whoever. . .
thank you
for the goddamn birds singing!
The poem has a wonderful slapdash spontaneous quality, as if the cranky poet were drawn into prayers of gratitude against his will.
Funny thing though. Look past the cheeky irreverence and improvisations, and there’s actually theology and structure (call it formality).
I was surprised to count the lines—fourteen—and realize Lux wrote his prayer as a sonnet.
And then surprised again to realize “Poem of Thanks” is less spoken prayer than a hymn. It’s no accident that
The last four lines, with the thrice-repeated, direct-address “Lord,” sound hymnal as well.
As for the theology, look no further than the first line, “thank you.” Gratitude is foundational to all religions, and Lux has trained his eye to see the graces in every part of life, the good and the bad—in the things we have that we need (Give us this day our daily bread); in those things we have that we need but aren’t perfect (the moth-gnawed blankets); in the things that are bonuses, a few levels-up on a Maslow scale (the ability to make music and art whether it be on the piano or on the page); and in those things that irritate and distract us from our work (the goddamn birds).
That Lux is a true believer in giving thanks for all things at all times is illustrated by this anecdote from poet, memoirist and novelist Mary Karr:
Poet Thomas Lux was somebody I saw a lot those days around Cambridge, since our babies were a year apart in age. One day after I’d been doing these perfunctory prayers for a while, I asked Lux—himself off the sauce for some years—if he’d ever prayed. He was barbecuing by a swimming pool for a gaggle of poets (Allen Grossman in a three-piece suit and watch fob was there that day, God love him). The scene comes back to me with Lux poking at meat splayed on the grill while I swirled my naked son around the swimming pool. Did he actually pray? I couldn’t imagine it—Lux, that dismal sucker.
Ever taciturn, Lux told me: I say thanks.
For what? I wanted to know.
. . . Back in Lux’s pool, I honestly couldn’t think of anything to be grateful for. I told him something like I was glad I still had all my limbs. That’s what I mean about how my mind didn’t take in reality before I began to pray. I couldn’t register the privilege of holding my blond and ringleted boy, who chortled and bubbled and splashed on my lap.
It was a clear day, and Lux was standing in his Speedo suit at the barbecue turning sausages and chicken with one of those diabolical-looking forks. Say thanks for the sky, Lux said, say it to the floorboards. This isn’t hard, Mare.
At some point, I also said to him, What kind of god would permit the Holocaust?
To which Lux said, You’re not in the Holocaust.
In other words, what is the Holocaust my business?
No one ever had an odder guru than the uber-ironic Thomas Lux, but I started following his advice by mouthing rote thank-you’s to the air, and, right off, I discovered something.
I taped “Poem in Thanks” to a palm tree next to Hanalei’s Waioli Mission Church, established 1834.
I’ll re-post Lux’s biography from a past post.
Thomas Lux was born in 1946 in Massachusetts. He was the only child of parents who both held jobs that no longer exist—his mother was a telephone operator and his father was a milkman. His father worked seventeen years with hardly a day off until his son was old enough to take over the route for a week to give him time off. Neither parent graduated from high school, but Lux, a star athlete in high school, went on to graduate from Emerson College and earn his MFA from University of Iowa.
Lux was the Poet in Residence at Emerson College and taught at many universities, including Sarah Lawrence, Iowa, and Michigan. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts grants, among other awards.
He directed the poetry program at Georgia Tech. He was married three times, had one daughter, and died in 2017 of lung cancer.
For anyone on Instagram who needs a break from the gloom-and-doom of Covid-19 news,
Thomas Lux was born in 1946 in Massachusetts. He was the only child of parents who both held jobs that no longer exist—his mother was a telephone operator and his father was a milkman. His father worked seventeen years with hardly a day off until his son was old enough to take over the route for a week to give him time off. Neither parent graduated from high school, but Lux, a star athlete in high school, went on to graduate from Emerson College and earn his MFA from University of Iowa.