EgretThis 1989 book began its life with the title Heron, and I made a few initial copies and then changed the title to Egret, mostly because the illustration I used on the front cover was actually an egret rather than a heron. So a few rare early copies of this collection have the title of Heron, but most copies are titled Egret—and on nicer paper with two extra pages and a slight rearrangement of a few of the poems. I forget how many copies I made of Heron, but fewer than fifty. The book has 84 pages in a size of 8½ inches square, and consists of the following eight sections with a total of 116 haiku and senryu and ten longer poems:
“The Cat’s Bell” was probably the first haibun I ever wrote. I published the book with my press, Press Here, in Foster City, California. As a time-capsule of the haiku I wrote then, this book shows me how much I had yet to learn about haiku, even though I’m still pleased with a few of them. In fact, one poem from this book later appeared in A Travel-Worn Satchel, the Haiku Society of America annual members’ anthology for 2009, at least twenty years after I first wrote it: +
sharp Winnipeg winds . . . walking backwards to the bus
The HSA anthology for 2009 sought poems of place, and this one happened to come to mind as one to submit. This poem isn’t among my best haiku, but at least it had a second lease on life. The following are selected poems from Egret, with an occasional comment.
no one to hear— a redwood falls and falls
chinook wind the smell of melting snow
october wind gravedigger rests his shovel
walking among sequoias on tiptoe
summer afternoon blade of grass swaying with the weight of a ladybird
empty field— a hay rack collecting tumbleweeds
The preceding poem was one of my first to win recognition in a contest—an honourable mention in a contest sponsored Haiku Quarterly, edited by Linda Valentine, in 1989.
winter stillness bare twigs zigzag through the air
big sur coast— waves pounding future sand
dreaming of spring I shake the snow from this pine
pouring a mug of tea seeing her reflection in the kettle
driving north pressing my finger to the glass
clinging to the cat at the roadside morning frost
when they pulled the body from the wreck his limp hand fell from hers
my window opens a hundred frogs sing to the moon
The preceding poem was my first haiku ever published in a literary haiku journal (that is, not counting school literary journals). Robert Spiess accepted it from my first-ever submission, and it appeared in Modern Haiku 19:3, Autumn 1988. It was partially inspired by the title of Hiroaki Sato’s book One Hundred Frogs. Spiess proposed that I change my original middle line from “one hundred frogs” (he doubted that I had counted them!) to “a hundred frogs.” This poem remains a favourite of mine, and takes me back to my graduate school dorm room in Southern California, outside of which flowed a small irrigation canal that came alive every evening with the din of frogs.
at a station near the metro petals on a brittle dry bough looking for the blossoms of a cherry finding pits
The preceding poem is one of the book’s ten “stick poems.” Here’s one more poem from the book.
|