When I Write a Haiku
by Terry Ann Carter
(after Naomi Beth Wakan)
I look to the sky after parking my car
in my mother’s laneway that forty
below February evening in Ottawa,
ice pointing downward from eaves,
wind sucking the breath from children,
and when I look up after punching
the key fob that locks the car doors
I notice the moon, hazy as it is,
between clouds moving so fast that I can see
darkness floating across its surface
and then it is hidden.
By the time I have reached my mother’s
front steps, the moon has disappeared
altogether, and I wait for a moment
still watching, until I see it again.
My mother is waiting on the results
of cancer tests and I am there
that evening to watch West Wing
our favourite tv show, and share
a cup of tea (orange pekoe) and I
remember the moon sliding behind
the clouds: seeing it—not seeing it.
And I think of her tests: will they be
positive or negative and in my mind
I put these two things together
the moon and my mother’s tests
and it looks like this:
moon
in and out of clouds
my mother’s cancer tests
a kind of connection with the Big Picture
the cosmos, and the little picture
which is me and my mother
waiting, in the space between.
From First I Fold the Mountain: A Love Letter to Books, Windsor, Ontario: Black Moss Press, 2022, pages 24–25. See also Naomi Beth Wakan’s “How to Write a Haiku.”