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.
How everything shines in morning light full of moonlight morning moonlight light
Based on the poem, Breakage, by Mary Oliver.
Thank you to my sister Lisa, to telling me about Ms. Oliver.
Here is the poem.
Breakage by Mary Oliver.
I go down to the edge of the sea. How everything shines in the morning light! The cusp of the whelk, the broken cupboard of the clam, the opened, blue mussels, moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. It’s like a schoolhouse of little words, thousands of words. First you figure out what each one means by itself, the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
go down to the edge of the sea – How everything shines in the morning light
It’s like a schoolhouse of little words, thousands of words First you figure out what each one means by itsel
– – – – – – –
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series of haiku based on the poem ‘Breakage’ by Mary Oliver.
sea and sky welded together without a joint vanishing flatness
Adapted from the opening lines of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
Conrad writes: In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom …
According to Wikipedia, Conrad “wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe.
Conrad was “was always at heart a writer who sailed, rather than a sailor who wrote.”
Conrad himself said about his writing that, “the public mind fastens on externals” such as his “sea life”, oblivious to how authors transform their material “from particular to general, and appeal to universal emotions by the temperamental handling of personal experience”.
I am near the water not out on the water, still I will say, that the overall overwhelming size of the ocean and the pace of tide puts a different pace to human endeavor, experience and feeling condensing them into a mournful gloom.
Sitting on the beach, on the ocean side I am reminded of Huckleberry Finn floating down the big still river saying, ” We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all.“
First you figure out what each one means by itself thousand little words
Based on the poem, Breakage, by Mary Oliver.
Thank you to my sister Lisa, to telling me about Ms. Oliver.
Here is the poem.
Breakage by Mary Oliver.
I go down to the edge of the sea. How everything shines in the morning light! The cusp of the whelk, the broken cupboard of the clam, the opened, blue mussels, moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. It’s like a schoolhouse of little words, thousands of words. First you figure out what each one means by itself, the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
go down to the edge of the sea – How everything shines in the morning light
It’s like a schoolhouse of little words, thousands of words First you figure out what each one means by itsel
– – – – – – –
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series of haiku based on the poem ‘Breakage’ by Mary Oliver.
one small step for man one giant leap for mankind did step on the moon
What did Neil Armstrong say when he landed on the Moon?
I mean okay, after he said Houston …
What did he say when he first stepped on the Moon?
The writers at NASA crafted this great line that he memorized but when he said it there was a buzz of static and the world remembers that he said, “one small step for man …’ and then said, “one giant leap for mankind.”
The goofy thing is I was 9 and I distincly heard FOR MAN and wondered what the difference was between MAN and MANKIND.
But NASA issued the press release that said Mr. Armstrong said, “A MAN.”
Mr. Armstrong said he said, “A MAN”
As in “One small step for A man.”
Which works much better with “One giant leap for mankind.”
What is funnier is that the third man on the moon, Pete Conrad, the mission commander of Apollo 12, who was shorter than Mr. Armstrong, said, “That might have been one small step for Neil, BUT WHOOOEEEEE.”
I guess in a way it IS more important that Mr. Armstrong steps were out on to the moon.
And he was the first to do it and that isn’t going to change.
But I came across another Neil Armstrong footnote yesterday that I was not aware of and I read a lot of these ‘early days of NASA’ books.
Yesterday I went in pursuit of the song, Fly Me to the Moon.
The information I came across again and again referred to the the fact that NASA had adopted the tune as a sort of theme song for the entire space program.
I thought that was interesting but not worth mentioning.
Not worth mentioning until I went search for a you tube video of the song.
I said yesterday I found lots and lots of videos of different recordings of Fly Me to the Moon.
One of them was of Jazz Great Diana Krall.
Well gee whiz, a LOT of them were of Jazz Great Diana Krall.
But one had a very odd thumbnail graphic.
I would swear it showed, a piano and Ms. Krall set up … in a church??
I had to click on it and there it was.
At the memorial service for Neil Armstrong, Commander of Apollo 11 and first man to set foot on the moon, Diana Krall performed Fly Me to Moon.
And you know what?
That is just pretty darn cool any way you present it.
Entirely appropriate.
Such a very right thing to do.
So entirely unexpected.
Commander of Apollo 11 and first man to set foot on the moon and Diana Krall performed Fly Me to Moon at your funeral.
That’s a trifecta in any book.
ps – anyone making notes for when the time comes and my ashes are scattered in the out going tide, you can ask Diana Krall to come sing and she can choose the song.
