Global Haiku • Spring 2013 |
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Stray Pages by 3rd place: "Stray Pages" by Darien The overall tone of this piece struck me. I like the way Darien uses haiku as a gateway into memories without the memories being fully repetitive. The integration of spirituality with the haiku reminded me of Raymond Roseliep (one of my personal favorites) .~Aubrie Cox
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Stray Pages The eraser squeaked uncomfortably loudly as Reverend Clemons attempted to rid his weekly haiku of the repeated word he’d accidentally written after being sidetracked by an interesting bit of scripture. While the blip of sound in the otherwise silent room, save the bright baritone of the assistant minister currently speaking, seemed to be uproariously loud to his worrisome ears. However, it seemed to go unnoticed by the congregation. Clemons folded up the edited haiku and placed it in his inside breast pocket to add to the shoeboxes full of weekly bulletins upon which he’d composed that were neatly stacked in his closet at home. The assistant minister who was speaking finished his sermon and called the children in the congregation to follow Reverend Clemons downstairs for their Sunday school. Clemons had been working at the church for almost sixty years, but he still insisted on being the one to teach the group of youngsters. Had he attended a Sunday school and had the chance to learn values, he might’ve lead to a healthier life as a young adult. But either way, the church eventually helped him find happiness, purpose, and a love for others, and he hoped to give as many people as possible that guidance that he had once so needed. It’s easy to get lost when you’re young, and the church gave him something to hold on to. After receiving that guidance, Clemons chose to become a minister as well, and Sunday school was his best chance to pay it forward. After he finished the Sunday school lesson and gave his sermon, Clemons shuffled down the street to his home. Along the way, Clemons gazed at the dreary street studded with worms from a recent rain. The fallen leaves clumped together in sopping balls of brown, and teardrops dripped from the branches above. Clemons’s mind wandered to the same subject that seemed to plague his days as of late: the use he’d made with his life and what lay ahead. Everyone questions if they’d made the right choices with their life, especially at his age. Everyone wonders if they should have lived their life differently, or what they could have been. Most of all, everyone questions their faith at some point. It is not illogical to fear death in your late seventies, and Clemons knew this, but it didn’t stop him from running through all of these questions and worries in his mind even as he ate his dinner, watched a bit of despondency via a news report, and readied himself for bed. A box of his very favorite haiku lay on his bed; several pages strewn about the bed reminded him of the worms that seemed stranded on the wet concrete. Clemons had taken up the hobby at recommendation of the pastor who had shown him the ropes in his earlier years. He’d recommended that Clemons use the time he had not giving sermons during services to stop and think, to search for clarity. Each day he wrote a new haiku, to take notice of the little things and find this clarity. Clemons grabbed the first bulletin in front of him and flipped to the back to gaze at his past writing. It read:
Clemons had written it about a child in his Sunday school class who’d been so worried about getting cast as Judas Iscariot in a show that certainly didn’t include Judas because it seemed that he only character in the bible that the child had determined as a “bad guy.” When Clemons told him he’d been cast as a shepherd, the child let out a shriek of relief and even went so far as to shed a brief tear. Clemons could tell the child was sensitive and helped him through many harder times as the child progressed to high school, and even into early adulthood. Smiling at the thought of the great man the child turned out to be, and the utter joy he’d produced when he’d learned of his part prompted Clemons to grab another bulletin and read the haiku scribbled upon it.
This haiku was also about his time as a Sunday school teacher, and was actually quite close to a word-for-word exclamation she’d heard from a child during their yearly Valentine’s exchange. He had the elementary school students draw each other Valentine’s Day after explaining to them the basis of Valentine’s Day and the value of loving one another. One child clearly loved one other a bit too much for his age, and was so delighted by the drawing he received from her that he showed it off to Clemons. Clemons chuckled, the child had eventually stopped attending church, but that didn’t stop him from becoming an upstanding member of the community that loved everyone: religious or not, Clemons was incredibly proud of the young man. Enjoying the chance to revitalize his withering mind with endearing thoughts from the past, Clemons read another.
Clemons swallowed his breath; the breath of emotion proceeded to gush down his chest and out to the very tips of his phalanges. The feeling left him utterly verklempt. It was not the writing that moved Clemons, but the remembrance of the elderly man in his congregation who sought his counseling after the death of his wife started a ripple effect that spread across a web of synapses and activated a score of related memories. Each session had left Clemons near tears, but after only a month, the old man passed away in turn. These moments, significant events in the lives of others, served as Clemons’s most intensive and prevalent memories. He didn’t become a rock star, a millionaire businessman, or an adventuring romantic author, but he’d participated in the lives of others, affecting them to various degrees in their life journeys. Visualizing this coalescence of minute happy moments to form a joyous picture of his life, Clemons wrote another haiku onto a piece of rogue copy paper on his dresser. Clemons gathered up the stray pages and put the box back into his closet. Turning off the lights and snuggling up into his warm bed, Clemons slept. He didn’t dream of the various theories on what might happen upon his future death, the myriad mistakes he may have made, or the opportunities he missed. He dreamed of love and of those who he had helped along their paths. He dreamed in peace.
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© 2013, Randy Brooks • Millikin University
All rights returned to authors upon publication.