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.
stand surf-tormented shore is all we see, seem but a dream within a dream?
Adapted from the poem, A Dream within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe.
The poem was first published in the March 31, 1849, edition of the Boston-based story paper The Flag of Our Union, so says Wikipedia and I am too lazy today to challenge the statement so I will just cite it and be done with it.
Wikipedia also says, The poem dramatizes the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away. Realizing he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question whether all things are just a dream.”
Wikipedia cite’s that statement’s source as Dawn B. Sova’s book, Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001).
May all things are dreams and as Big Bill has Prospero say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on … ” (The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1)
Which I guess leads to the question, which comes first, the dreamer or the dream?
For the photo and something I may use later:
Shadows on the waves frozen on the phone moments caught once forever
Here is Mr. Poe’s poem.
A Dream within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
passing footfalls beat in my ear like restless surf of a wind-blown sea
While the hum and the hurry Of passing footfalls Beat in my ear like the restless surf Of a wind-blown sea, A soul came to me Out of the look on a face.
Eyes like a lake Where a storm-wind roams Caught me from under The rim of a hat. I thought of a midsea wreck and bruised fingers clinging to a broken state-room door.
Under a Hat Rim by Carl Sandburg published in Chicago Poems, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1916.
nuances spoken delicate change – cloud and blue and flimmering sun
On a tip, the wife and I visited Sands Beach at Port Royal, South Carolina.
As the crow flies, its 13 miles from where we live.
To drive there, around the swamps and marches of the low country of South Carolina, its a 40 minute, 27 mile drive.
It is located at the southern tip of Port Royal Island where Battery Creek breaks off from the Beaufort River a few miles above Port Royal Sound.
The beach has a walkway along Battery Creek and a 4 story observation tower.
The view from the top of this tower helps you understand the meaning of ‘the low country.’
The day we were there, the water was still and blue and the surface reflected the sky and clouds in a way that defeated use of any words in the my dictionary.
I was reminded of the writing of Jenny Lawson who in her book, Furiously Happy, used the word, Concoctulary, which she footnoted, saying ” … a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.”
Ms. Lawson doesn’t just invent words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist, she made a word for the words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.
Concoctulary.
As Ms. Lawson writes, “… It’s a portmanteau of “concocted” and “vocabulary.” I was going to call it an “imaginary” (as a portmanteau of “imagined” and “dictionary”) but turns out that the word “imaginary” was already concoctularied, which is actually fine because “concoctulary” sounds sort of unintentionally dirty and is also great fun to say. Try it for yourself. Con-COC-chew-lary. It sings.”
So I needed a word for the way the clouds reflected in the blue still water of Batter Creek off of Sands Beach in Port Royal and I found flimmering.
Try it for yourself.
It sings.
No surprise to say that I didn’t invent it though.
Carl Sandburg did.
In his poem, Dream Girl, in the section Other Days of the book, Chicago Poems as reprinted in the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Mr. Sandburg wrote:
You will come one day in a waver of love, Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, The tan of the sun will be on your skin, The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech, You will pose with a hill-flower grace.
You will come, with your slim, expressive arms, A poise of the head no sculptor has caught And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck, Your face in pass-and-repass of moods As many as skies in delicate change Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
Yet, You may not come, O girl of a dream, We may but pass as the world goes by And take from a look of eyes into eyes, A film of hope and a memoried day.
Flimmering.
As many as skies in delicate change Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
present hard enough to deal with – couldn’t handle notion of future
The present was hard enough to deal with so that you couldn’t very well handle the notion of the future. He had noticed that it arrived in daily increments without any effort. The more central struggle in life was between water and beer. Too much beer, he knew from many years of experience, tended to be hard on the system.
Once again another quote from The Brown Dog Novellas by Jim Harrison, New York, Grove Press, 2013.
The Brown Dog Novellas is an anthology that contains all five of the Brown Dog stories and as those read this will be aware, it is the book I am listening to as I drive to work.
Since the first thing I do once I get to work, after I make sure my computer and all the other tech stuff I need for day is up and running, is to think about writing this.
Mr. Harrison’s words are fresh on my mind.
I am in an office on the knife edge of America.
A couple of blocks from me is the Atlantic Ocean.
As Mr. Thoreau said I have the rest of the country behind me.
A couple of blocks from me is the Atlantic Ocean and sitting at my desk, looking at a computer screen, I could be anywhere else in the world.
And the words of Mr. Harrison are fresh on my mind.
I read all the Brown Dog stories when they were first published and I must have read then all dozens of times.
It was reading the first Brown Dog in Woman Lit by Fireflies and the passage where Brown Dog is driving the ice truck down the hill in Grand Marais, aiming to make it into Lake Superior, that I knew Mr. Harrison and I would be get along.
The present was hard enough to deal with so that you couldn’t very well handle the notion of the future. He had noticed that it arrived in daily increments without any effort.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time is a quote somehow connected to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson but I have not been able to trace this to an actual citation.
There is a ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ quality to both statements.
The present was hard enough to deal with so that you couldn’t very well handle the notion of the future.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
I guess it is good to remember that there is no place like home.
Words I have never heard of but that I see in action almost everyday since moving to the coastal empire of the low country of South Carolina.
I live about as close to the seashore as one can live without being wealthy beyond my dreams.
I live in a coastal enviroment.
I live where where the majority of the birds that I see every day are known as sea birds.
According to wikipedia, There exists no single definition of which groups, families and species are seabirds, and most definitions are in some way arbitrary. Elizabeth Shreiber and Joanna Burger, two seabird scientists, said, “The one common characteristic that all seabirds share is that they feed in saltwater; but, as seems to be true with any statement in biology, some do not.
Seabirds have had to, over time, adapt to living by the sea or living by saltwater.
Again according to Wikipedia, one of the things that set sea birds apart from other birds is that they have salt glands that are used by seabirds to deal with the salt they ingest by drinking and feeding (particularly on crustaceans), and to help them osmoregulate. The excretions from these glands (which are positioned in the head of the birds, emerging from the nasal cavity) are almost pure sodium chloride.
I was looking up sea birds the other day as I had just snapped a picture of a sanderling or a plover to send to my sister.
I was mentioning to my sister how the different sea birds that feed along the wave line have beaks of different lengths so that as good things for sea birds to eat are at different depths in the sand, many different sea birds can feed along the same stretch of beach.
Just one of those cool little factoids of nature to keep in your back pocket when walking along the wave line with friends and you want to show some smart.
While reading about sea birds in Wikipedia, I read that just quoted passage and hit that word, osmoregulate.
I love words like that that I never came across before.
I also love any word that spell check tosses out which tells me the computers haven’t seen the word either.
I had to look it up.
Again according to Wikipedia, “Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content; that is, it maintains the fluid balance and the concentration of electrolytes (salts in solution which in this case is represented by body fluid) to keep the body fluids from becoming too diluted or concentrated. Osmotic pressure is a measure of the tendency of water to move into one solution from another by osmosis. The higher the osmotic pressure of a solution, the more water tends to move into it. Pressure must be exerted on the hypertonic side of a selectively permeable membrane to prevent diffusion of water by osmosis from the side containing pure water.”
Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content.
Simple enough, right?
I mean it means just what is says.
Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content.
It takes the salt out.
Oh.
Simple right?
I enjoy reading books about walking the Appalachian Trail.
I come away with two thoughts.
These people are cool.
These people are also nuts.
But I read the books any way and often look up all the cool equipment they mention.
One of the many pieces of cool equipment mentioned are portable water filters.
It came to me that if one of these filters could filter seawater and remove the salt, they would be perfect for the beach.
I looked up the most recommended filtering product.
It was a series of bottles connected with a hand pump.
Fill up one bottle with water from your local backwoods, high in the Blue Ridge Mountain spring.
Pump the water through the filter to the other bottle and bango-presto all the impurities and chemicals and bugs and amoebas and other nasties that cause all sorts of problems you don’t want to deal with while walking the Appalachian Trail are removed and the water is safe to drink.
I contacted the company to asked if their system could filter saltwater?
Had I known, I would have asked if their system could osmoregulate water.
The company was quick to respond.
They told me their product COULD NOT remove salt from seawater.
They also had to point out that ANYONE who came up with such a filter would be a BILLIONAIRE.
Well, boy howdy but that shut me up.
But now I think, sea birds can do it.
Osmoregulation.
What’s the big deal?
Like those different lengths of beaks, sometimes you just have to take the back seat and the same time, take your hat half to nature.
