Category: Beach

Some of these beach haiku were written by random trips to beach.

Most of these are part of a series based on afternoons spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island with my pad out ( a real paper note pad), hoping for words with my iPhone camera handy to add illustration to my thoughts.
I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Please aware that most of these haiku were NOT WRITTEN on the date in the title – for an explanation of this please see The Series link in the navigation table.

5.29.2026 – when you travel you

when you travel … you
have adventures, to tourists …
time is valuable

Adding experiences in Georgia and Virginia and the Carolinas to their knowledge of Florida, the Johnsons saw and drank deep of Savannah, Charleston, Asheville, Richmond, and Newport News.

They were able to do all five cities in six days, while the Bezuzuses had taken eight for them.

In Charleston they saw Calhoun’s grave and learned all about the aristocratic society.

They were so pleasantly entertained there, by a very prominent and successful business acquaintance of Mr. Johnson’s, a Mr. Max Rosenfleisch of New York, who had bought a fine old Southern mansion in Charleston and thus, of course, was right in with all the old families socially.

Mr. Rosenfleisch said he liked the aristocrats, but was going to change a lot of their old-fashioned social ways, and show them how to have a real swell time, with cabarets and theater parties, instead of these slow dances, and teach them to dine at seven instead of three or four.

The Johnsons were quite thrilled at witnessing the start of this social revolution—I tell you, it’s when you travel that you have such unusual adventures.

They themselves would actually have met some of the inner social set of Charleston, but Mr. Rosenfleisch was having the den redecorated before giving any more of his smart, exclusive parties, and meantime the Johnsons had to be getting on—to a tourist, time is valuable.

Adapted from I’m a Stranger Here Myself as reprinted in I’m a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories by Sinclair Lewis (Dell, New York, 1962).

5.15.2026 – there was light upon

there was light upon
the sea that made familiar
things mysterious

The Salt Marshes

There was a light upon the sea that made
Familiar things mysterious, which to teach,
With inarticulate, alluring speech,
The living wind with lisping tongue essayed.
O’er sand and weed and spongy moss I strayed
And lifeless, orient shells, musing on each;
While casting nets with ever wider reach
A fisher plied his immemorial trade.
A sea-bird winged the aerial solitude
Searching the deep for his appointed dole,
Where his wide-wandering flocks the ocean feeds;
And with the day’s full orbed strength indued,
At one with all, by all illumed, my soul
Pulsed to the rhythmus of immortal deeds.

By Peter MacArthur and published in his book, Lines (1901).

Peter McArthur (1866-1924) was a Canadian writer. Born in farming country in Middlesex County, Ontario, early in his life he started on a writing career, joining the Toronto Mail as a reporter in 1890. He found he had a knack for writing humour and submitted jokes and satirical essays to periodicals of the time. In 1902 he went to England where he wrote for Punch. After a failed business venture in New York, he returned to his farm home but still submitted articles and essays to magazines.Future books and essays began to feature stories of farm life – he was an advocate of ‘back-to-the-land’ agrarianism. In the 1920s he stopped writing after he joined a rural trust company as an executive. He lived out the rest of his life selling insurance to farmers. (Bio from Fadedpage.com)

I live a five miles from the Atlantic Coast and 6 feet above sea level.

Wikipedia says the average width of the United States is 2,800 miles so my five miles to the coast is 0.1786% of the width of the continent which is pretty much on the cutting edge.

We have the first sunrise.

And the first sunset.

There is a light here upon the sea and the marsh that makes familiar things mysterious.

The living wind with lisping tongue essays.

O’er sand and weed and spongy moss I stray.

5.6.2026 – not here and now but

not here and now but
now and here – a matter of
life, death, ticking watch

Fish Haul Beach at Low Tide – Spring 2026

Adapted from the collection of poems, After Ikkyū & Other Poems, where Jim Harrison writes:

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don’t know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.

This collection of poems by Jim Harrison, released in 1996, is deeply influenced by his long-term engagement with Zen practice and is named after the eccentric 15th-century Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun and was republished in The Complete Poems of Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Denver: Copper Canyon Press 2022).

Mr Harrison once wrote, To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime.

Not here and now

but now and here.

If you don’t know the difference is a matter of life and death,

get down naked on bare knees in the snow …

and study the ticking of your watch.

Not sure OF the difference of here and now or now and here so I am studying the ticking of my watch.

But I wear a watch that winds itself as I walk.

If its ticking I must be walking and if I am walking now I am here now.

For reasons of its own, my watch has stopped.

Now not sure if I am here.

4.29.2026 – ignorant of how

ignorant of how
they see, don’t see unless work
very hard at it

Paul Cézanne – The Village of L’Estaque Seen from the Sea (Le village de l’Estaque vu de la mer)

Sprawled there by the creek and cautioning myself against my canteen whiskey I stared at the assortment of dead leaves that had gathered themselves in the spring, with some floating, a few suspended in the clear water, and the bottom of the spring pasted yellow and dull red with the others.

I had once tried to paint this phenomenon, unsuccessfully in the minds of others because it is not the sort of thing one can see clearly.

There was the odd thought, absent for years, that nearly everyone was ignorant of how they see, lost as they were in the attraction for the simplicity of photographs, which is not how anyone sees.

We don’t see all at once unless we work very hard at it.

When I first saw Cézanne’s work I was dumbstruck at his comprehension of true vision.

From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).

I think that is why I enjoy the beach.

I want to see it all at once.

I work very hard at it.

4.27.2026 – it can rise, ebb, froth

it can rise, ebb, froth
frenzy fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely

Adapted from the poem, The Poet Compares Human Nature To The Ocean From Which We Came

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

The Poet Compares Human Nature To The Ocean From Which We Came as pubished in A Thousand Mornings
by Mary Oliver, (Penguin: New York, 2012).