"They're calling us - sounds of the world in haiku"

This selection was published in "Mind Moon Circle - journal of the Sydney Zen Centre" in the autumn edition. 

cockatoos, currawongs, the baby: all calling at the fall of day
	hundreds of frogs sing an ode to La Nina
they’re calling us over and over the hidden birds
	midday heat - walkers soak up the sound of water
why in this moment does the honeyeater sing? Google cannot say
	the trees conferring amongst themselves around the spring
on our last night even your snoring is precious
	cicada sings a three-minute life story

You can read the whole journal from this link: http://szc.org.au/uploads/Autumn_MMC.pdf

"Haiku from Here" - on piano

Happy wanderer -  Hardenbergia violacea

Musician Jane Andino has composed some beautiful piano pieces based on two of my haiku, and one by Christopher Ash. 

sun orchid

The music and haikus are shortly to be published by Wirripang music - called "Haiku from Here". 

Meanwhile, here are some photos from the walk along Faulconbridge ridge, during which I composed the haiku about remembering the names of flowers. 

Leptospermum

I had been out the day before with Jim Percy, Blue Mountains Conservation Society Saturday walks co-ordinator, who was kindly doing map-and-compass work with me.

Native iris - has a rhizome underneath - Patersonia sericea

Grevillea sericea

Wax flower - Philotheca

I was indeed a happy wanderer - with backpack and handy notebook.

I'll let you know when the sheet music is published by Wirripang. 

AUTUMN IN SYDNEY'S BOTANIC GARDENS

 the Japanese characters - from Pamela

slowly unfurling

the basho leaves

strong in containment

Diana

I gathered the WEA students round the banana plants in the Botanic Gardens ( ‘basho’ is their literary Japanese word), to help us begin writing haiku. Basho, the seventeenth century Japanese poet made the ‘haikai’ a stand-alone verse. They expressed autumn beautifully with their bunches of fruit.

The tools of a haiku poet on a ginko are a notebook and a pen. The challenge is, to convert the experience of a natural setting into something written on the blank page.

So gently falling

on the white page

a little brown seed

Ninette

We hoped to find subjects that would signify the season. This was the next challenge, in a Botanic gardens which has a collection of plants from all over the world, to find something that is endemic to Sydney. The next two haiku do this by comparing one thing with another.

Summer gone

next to the gum tree

a plane tree turns to gold

Ninette

nestled below the bare

peach tree––

one tri-coloured flower

Mena Johnson

The human cheer emanating from the café was alluring but we focused more on plant and animal life.

poised on one leg

the plover stalks––

lunch

Mena Johnson

So simple! So complete! The next haiku has strong imagery and leaves a lot open to the reader’s imagination.

dark throated Bromeliad

central silent pond -

Beautiful assassin

Leslie

And her next one illustrates how a haiku can suggest something, that there are layers. There was an ikebana exhibition on, and Leslie treads a delicate balance between the human and the natural. 


On a bamboo pole
Ikebana shivers - 
Winter is approaching


Her last haiku looks ahead to the season of new life.

Green swords

Pierce the earth

Promise of spring

Leslie Frost

Xxxxxx

These students wrote some very affecting haikus when the course was over.

In a foreign place,

A banana leaf plate,

Adobo stew – I’m home.

Some time in the quiet winter’s night

Your heart just stopped.

My friend is gone.

Pamela Huggins

Petals and dreams

Blooms nodding in the wind

caressing my memories

Eia Stanich

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And this last one ( can’t we all relate?) is a senryu rather than a haiku – it focuses squarely on the human.

My computer does

strange and mysterious things -

quiet despair

Ninette

My next haiku course at the WEA runs over 2 Saturdays, the 22nd and 29th October. Details here:

https://www.skillsoncourse.com.au/portal/class/5112720

talk at Beaches Sangha Thursday June 2

inside pohutakawa

I will be giving a talk entitled "Haiku - Writing Zen" to the Beaches Sangha on Thursday June 2nd. They meet on the northern beaches of Sydney at the aptly named Oxford Falls Peace Park, Oxford Falls. This is on the corner of Dreadnought Rd and the Wakehurst Parkway, and there is an old school-house there. Oxford Falls is west of Dee Why and east of Belrose. Be there at 7 pm for a 7:10pm start with meditation. 

I was in New Zealand in the Auckland region recently, admiring pohutakawa trees. 

tree power
grabs the cliff and makes of it
leaves and branches

outside pohutakawa

You'll find my haiku on sound in the latest "mind moon circle", journal of the Sydney Zen Centre. It's called "They're calling us - sounds of the world in haiku".

http://szc.org.au/archive/mind-moon-circle-autumn-2016/

I've just led a walk for the Blue Mountains Conservation Society to Ironpot Ridge, near Green Gully. The reccie took my buddy Warwick and I down Ironmonger Spur and up Breakfast creek, which was almost completely dry.




He said, "No birds; no rustling in the bushes; no nothing except bushwalking". 

 See F'Book BMCS Longer Bushwalks for a full report and photos. 

Casuarina cunninghamiana (river oak)

International Haiku Day

I camped and then walked with my friends Will, Sue and Lily down the Cox's river to the Little river junction. 

two rivers braid
the sound of them
like conversation

The Cox's is a shadow of its former self. Will noticed this especially, having walked here frequently as a youth. 

missing from the pool

where orange-lipped carp laze - 

all the other fish

Haiku cannot wash the current beseiged state of nature in some kind of burnished glow from the past. That would be fake. 

the cows pause

at the sound of the gun - 

momentarily

Still - we had a wonderful time.

the river burbling

while we sing

about dishwashing

writing zen

I'm not giving up

burnt and broken tree 

still standing

This is my best and latest haiku. Some people wonder how to begin to write. Not many ever wonder how to begin to walk. If you combined those two things, and let your writing hand move the way your legs move, you would find it easy. And you would write what you know. If you walked barefoot, you might write about the feel of the grass under your feet. Or, if we were beside the harbour, the smell of salt in the air, seagulls - ferries. You know this because you are right there. This is what I mean by "writing zen". 

 I wrote that haiku at Mt. York, in the Blue Mountains, where the 2013 fires impacted. We were just wandering along, enjoying ourselves. Would you like to  join us for two haiku ginkos (walks), at the WEA , Sydney? - enrolling now. We'll enjoy Sydney's Botanic Gardens. 

https://www.weasydney.com.au/course/HGWZ

HAIKU COURSE AT WEA, SYDNEY

Slow down, observe, write, refresh.......by taking my course JAPANESE POETRY: HAIKU GINKO -  WRITING ZEN
at the WEA Sydney (Bathurst St).

 Beginning Thursday April 7 2016, a 5 week course of writing and walking combined.
See details on:

https://www.weasydney.com.au/…/Arts+and+Humaniti…/Literature

Two ginkos (haiku walks, you write while you walk) in Sydney's beautiful parks.

You could write about fig trees.....egrets.....grass....sunshine.......harbour......cormorants......fish......bridges......ah, now there's a good topic.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From a recent walk with the barefoot monk, Bhante Jason:

the snake stiffens

seeing me

banded throat retreats

afternoon gully 

and the bush falls silent -

my breath and my steps