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.
there is another sky ever serene fair and another sunshine
Based on the sonnet, There is another sky, by Emily Dickinson
There is another sky, Ever serene and fair, And there is another sunshine, Though it be darkness there; Never mind faded forests, Austin, Never mind silent fields – Here is a little forest, Whose leaf is ever green; Here is a brighter garden, Where not a frost has been; In its unfading flowers I hear the bright bee hum: Prithee, my brother, Into my garden come!
If I am honest, I have to ask the question, did I like the sonnet or did I go looking for something that I could use with a picture from my lunchtime walk to show off that I walk along the ocean at lunch time.
prodigious number people hanged by no means bad time for criminals
Inspired by:
In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged, the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals.
A great confusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape of private housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat.
Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his pocket and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easily slip out and become once more a free marauder.
As it appears in the 1926 title, The Book of The Rogue by Joseph Lewis French.
According to the Wikipedia, Joseph Lewis French. (1858–1936) was a novelist, editor, poet and newspaper man. The New York Times noted in 1925 that he may be “the most industrious anthologist of his time.”[2] He is known for his popular themed collections, and published more than twenty-five books between 1918 and his death in 1936. He initiated two magazines, The New West (c. 1887) and The Wave (c. 1890). Afterward he worked for newspapers “across the country” contributing poetry and articles. He struggled financially, and during 1927 the New York Graphic, a daily tabloid, published an autobiographical article they convinced him to write, entitled “I’m Starving – Yet I’m in Who’s Who as the Author of 27 Famous Books.”
The New York Times reports in his obit that Mr. French “insisted that the actual rewards of authorship were few.”
In his book of collected stories on pirates, Great Pirate Stories, Mr. French wrote:
It was a bold hardy world—this of ours—up to the advent of our giant-servant, Steam,—every foot of which was won by fierce conquest of one sort or another.
Out of this past the pirate emerges as a romantic, even at times heroic, figure.
This final niche, despite his crimes, cannot altogether be denied him.
A hero he is and will remain so long as tales of the sea are told.
So, have at him, in these pages!
A hero he is and will remain so long as tales of the sea are told
As you knew, today’s haiku is based on an a newspaper article about the restaurant industry.
In the guest opinion essay, “Foodie Fever Dreams Can’t Keep Restaurants Afloat” by Vivian Howard, a chef and restaurateur, is the author of two cookbooks and the host of the PBS series “A Chef’s Life” and “Somewhere South.”
Ms. Howard writes:
Even so, Chef & the Farmer closed, in large part because the inefficiencies, stress and fatigue brought by an unsustainable business model became impossible to ignore. Our industry needs to evolve or else more full-service, cuisine-driven restaurants like mine will languish their way to extinction.
About being in the restaurant business, she write: “…perhaps why you so rarely hear a parent say: “You should get into the restaurant business. It looks like a nice life.“
As Anthony Bourdain once said, “I mean, I admire anyone who wants to cook and knowingly enters the field.
It’s a hard thing.
But, you know, look before you leap.
Because I’ve seen that so many times, kids coming out of cooking school and working in my kitchens, and literally two weeks in, you see it.
You look behind the line, and you can just see the dream die.
This terrible information sinking in, like, “Oh my God, this is nothing like they told me it was going to be.”
And I am thinking of going out to dinner tonight.
At least, as of right now.
I think I need a job that pays you to be on the beach.
Maybe the one I have that lets me on the beach at lunchtime is good enough.
But consider the beach.
Twice a day the tide comes in and wipes it clean.
Completely and efficiently.
No fatugue.
No stress.
Though I am sure that if I had the job to clean sweep the beach twice a day, I would make a mess of it and I would languish on my way to extinction.
sun shone salt glittered like tinsel the wind tousled the sea prettily
Adapted from:
Prepared for a slice of heroic adventure, they found themselves in the middle of a floating vicarage garden fete .
The sun shone.
The salt in the air glittered like tinsel In the enclosed water of the Solent, the stiffish southerly wind did no more than prettily tousle the sea.
Though I had made an important fuss of laying compass courses on the chart and calculating tidal streams, there was no navigation, since everyone could see exactly where everywhere was.
There was no solitude, either.
There was hardly any room at all in which to move.
From the book Coasting by Jonathan Raban
Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist known for his candid accounts of travelling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting, has died aged 80, his agent has confirmed.
and here you may find me on almost any lunchtime walk along the shore
Every day the sea blue gray green lavender pulls away leaving the harbor’s dark-cobbled undercoat
slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls walk there among old whalebones, the white spines of fish blink from the strandy stew as the hours tick over; and then
far out the faint, sheer line turns, rustling over the slack, the outer bars, over the green-furled flats, over the clam beds, slippery logs,
barnacle-studded stones, dragging the shining sheets forward, deepening, pushing, wreathing together wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures
spilling over themselves, lapping blue gray green lavender, never resting, not ever but fashioning shore, continent, everything.
And here you may find me on almost any morning walking along the shore so light-footed so casual.
Tides by Mary Oliver
If I leave my the building where I work and turn left and walk up the street, cross at the corner and walk up a path through a parking lot, it takes me about 2 minutes to get to this view.
Oddly enough this was not mentioned as a perk of the job when I interviewed here.
Favored by good fortune and smart enough to not question it but just enjoy it.
