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.
sunny sun shinning out from the clouds warming down rolling over my skin
Part of a series based on afternoons 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.
death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew
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.
place never return resulting from rare conjunctions season, light, weather
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.
busy with nothing time weighs heavy on my hands why I like the beach
I decided something.
After 20 years in online news, I no longer know how to relax.
After 20 years of never being ‘off’ the job.
After 20 years of always being ‘on’ the job.
I find myself thinking I should be doing something.
When recent weather cycles went across the country, I gratefully thought I had no part to play.
But then what?
I really enjoy going to beach.
Something happens to me there.
Not just mental but physical.
I hate cold feet.
My dresser drawer is filled with thick thick socks.
I have a collection of thick slippers.
I like to wear cowboy boots because they keep my ankles from drafts.
I keep a room heater on the floor by my feet.
What will keep my feet warm is among my first questions each day.
Then I go to the beach.
I go to the beach in sandals (me? sandals?).
And they don’t stay on very long.
Barefoot in the sand.
Barefoot in the ocean.
I should be freezing.
Thinking about it makes me cold.
Thinking about it makes me shudder and shake and shiver.
Doing it?
I don’t feel the cold.
My toes dig into the sand and make patterns and it almost someone else’s feet.
If I could stand having all those electrodes and such stuck to my head, I would love to see what a brain scan shows when my feet are cold and when my feet are not cold at the beach.
Something in shifts the gears in my brain at the beach.
And when I am at the beach I am at the beach.
I am not doing nothing.
I am at the beach.
I am occupied.
I am busy being at the beach.
I am keeping myself busy.
It’s my job now.
At least part of my job.
I get paid partly to get the beach experience online somehow.
low tide waves slide high rolling long wide water thins washing up retreats
Part of a series based on afternoons 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.
