A slight drizzle began a few minutes ago and birds arriving for spring settle here and there on the grass and next to the early daffodils blooming in a circle on the side yard. For many years I began my morning writing practice with haiku, three or four maybe five. Lately I’ve abandoned haiku for prose, a few lines about weather. Every day it is my intention to return. It is how I begin. Begin with nature, noticing what surrounds me, waking up my senses, embracing my mood. Most days I burn the rosewood incense brought home from Zen Mountain Monastery years ago. Let go of laundry, dishes in the sink, the puppy hopefully napping in the next room, bills unpaid, phone calls unanswered, family far away. Haiku brings me to the moment, this moment. I like the weaving: of season, of moon, of tides, of birds, of plants blooming or not, of feeling. I like counting syllables: 5-7-5. I fancy myself a formalist It’s a warming up, a settling down and in. It announces my arrival at my desk once again. Notebook open, pen in hand. I pause, revel in the solitude, stillness. Contemplation. I may or may not turn to one of my favorite books close by: Haiku- the sacred art: A Spiritual Practice in Three Lines by Margaret D. McGee, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa edited by Robert Hass, Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey by Clark Strand, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho translated by Lucien Stryk and of course, Basho’s Narrow Road to the Interior and other Writings translated by Sam Hamill, my bible of sorts.
Today I open Narrow Road to the Interior. Its form, haibun, a combination of haiku and prose. I reread: The sun and moon are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. He leaves a verse by the door:
Even this grass hut
may be transformed
into a doll’s house.
And then: Spring passes
and the birds cry out- tears
in the eyes of fishes.
Another pause, remembering my own note by the door before hiking Three Ridges Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail several years ago:
Even this seaside room
may be transformed into a
temple of warm tears
This marked the beginning of hiking the same trail in different seasons after the tradition of Basho. It was a trail I hiked over three decades at different stages of my life: as a young woman, as a mother with her children, with friends, alone. Lauren Artress writes to be pilgrims walking on a path, we need to participate in the dance between silence and image, ear and eye, inner and outer. We need to change our seeking into discovery, our drifting into Pilgrimage. Whenever I hiked Three Ridges I established a rhythm, a placement of feet,the carrying of weight, packing in and packing out, miles covered, movement to my own heartbeat. I remember the pleasure of reaching a summit, the sway of the switchback, steepness, the misstep, the blazed trail, momentary confusion. The mountain as devotion. The walk as meditation. Once again I reread Basho; I pack no provisions for my long journey-entering emptiness under the moonnight moon. The voice of the wind was oddly cold.
Weather-beaten bones,
I'll leave your heart exposed
to cold, piercing winds
And so today I begin again the practice of haiku, the practice of haibun, returning as if finding my footing, picking back up the trail after veering off:
A slight drizzle on
the circle of daffodils
spring birds here and there.
The last few nights of the crescent moon and stars bright. Travelers return to the Shore. Our life together still unsettled with transitions, dreamed and not dreamed. Many years since we walked one step than another, before love, when only friendship passed between us.
