Early Morning Walk

Here’s the second poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter E:

early morning walk—

the cold sparrows bring to mind

that famous poem

The famous poem referred to here is James W. Hackett’s “bitter morning / sparrows sitting together / without any necks,” which won grand prize in the 1964 Japan Air Lines international haiku contest. It’s likely the most famous English-language haiku in Japan. I first wrote my allusion to Hackett’s poem on 22 May 2007 in Snoqualmie, Washington, and submitted it to the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s Tokutomi Haiku Contest (hence the 5-7-5 format). It didn’t place, nor was it published in the following fourteen journals or anthologies I submitted it to from 2008 to 2022: Acorn, Asahi Weekly, A Hundred Gourds, the British Haiku Society members’ anthology, Hedgerow, Mariposa, Presence, Heron’s Nest, Wales Haiku Journal, Mamba, Acorn (again, with a different editor), Hedgerow (again, by accident), Tinywords, and Shamrock. But persistence pays off. I then submitted it to Haiku Forum in Japan, where it was published in 2022. Here’s the Japanese translation by Toru Kiuchi that also appeared in Haiku Forum:

早朝の散歩一

冷えた雀が心に届ける

著名な詩

Hackett’s poem was originally published in American Haiku in 1963, in a shorter version, but apparently that did not disqualify it from winning the Japan Air Lines contest and a trip to Japan. I met Hackett numerous times (he lived in La Honda, California, not far from where I lived in the Bay Area), and he was once the featured reader in my “Haiku City” reading series (where he read brand-new poems after taking a public hiatus from publishing haiku for at least a decade). He was also a keynote speaker for the Haiku North America conference I helped to organize in 1993. Hackett’s poem presents a vivid and compassionate image, making it impossible for me not to recall his poem whenever I see cold sparrows.

—19 May 2025 (previously unpublished)