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.
no markers in sight
sense being unmoored from time
some abstract yearning
Adapted from the article, Trekking the Great Ocean Walk: ‘Stand with no land mass between your sweaty skin and Antarctica’ and the line:
I drop back to walk alone and with no markers of era in sight, it could be a hundred years ago; a thousand. The sense of being unmoored from time satiates some abstract yearning I didn’t even know I had.
it’s an urge to say
I was here, I saw this and
it mattered to me
Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.’
But beauty is fugitive, being frequently found in places to which we may never return or else resulting from rare conjunctions of season, light and weather.
How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halvalike bricks or the English valley?
The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.
As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.
I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.
Neat trick in writing a book.
If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.
falls the rain each day
each night under the rain the sore
the gold are as one
Adapted from the poem Still Falls the Rain by Edith Stilwell (1887-1964) in the section:
Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us —
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one
Can’t say I was familiar with the poem.
Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus is a work for harp and string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The composition is based on the folk tune “Dives and Lazarus”, one of the folk songs quoted in Vaughan Williams’ English Folk Song Suite.
It was playing on the radio and I wondered who Dives was.
According to wikipedia, “In some European countries, the Latin description dives (Latin for “the rich man”) is treated as his proper name: Dives.”
It seems the tune for the five variants has it roots in the hymn, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say –
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down,
Thy head upon My breast.’
I came to Jesus as I was,
So weary, worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink and live.’
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream.
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘I am this dark world’s Light.
Look unto Me; thy morn shall rise
And all thy day be bright.’
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my Star, my Sun;
And in that Light of Life I’ll walk
Till traveling days are done.
It all started here.
Luke 16:19-31
New International Version
The Rich Man and Lazarus
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’
He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’
I looked to Jesus, and I found In Him my Star, my Sun;
wavy surf song sounds
floppy floappy sowop swish
sparkling fizz sizzles
I like how many of the words in this haiku were thrown out by spell check.
Listen to the sound of waves.
What words do you here?
I had to make mine up as the words didn’t exist.
On the one, I am sure most readers or wave listeners would agree with me that the words just aren’t there.
On the other, time, tide and waves have been around since day 1 on the schedule and we haven’t come up with words yet?
There is an old Jewish fable or midrash I think there were called when God and Satan are arguing in the Garden of Eden about how smart Adam might be.
God says to prove it, he will ask Adam if he can identify all these new animals.
God calls up Adam and says to him, “Adam, what do think this rabbit is?”
And Adam says, “That is a rabbit.”
Another version has an Angel whispering the animal names to Adam.
My point is if we, the human race, got some help describing animals, why not with waves?
Where are the words?
What are the words?
I certainly hear the sounds.
Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.
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.
wrote her name upon
the strand, but came the waves and
washed it away
Adapted from the sonnet, Amoretti LXXV, by Edmund Spenser.
This is one of several haiku I got from this sonnet.
Edmund Spenser (1553-1559), according to wikipedia, was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.
In 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. This volume contains eighty-eight sonnets commemorating his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. In Amoretti, Spenser uses subtle humour and parody while praising his beloved, reworking Petrarchism in his treatment of longing for a woman.
Spenser used a distinctive verse form, called the Spenserian stanza. The stanza’s main meter is iambic pentameter with a final line in iambic hexameter (having six feet or stresses, known as an Alexandrine), and the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. He also used his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet. In a Spenserian sonnet, the last line of every quatrain is linked with the first line of the next one, yielding the rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcdee.
But you knew that.
Here is the full sonnet.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
‘Vain man,’ said she, ‘that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.’
‘Not so,’ (quod I); ‘let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
