Global Haiku • Spring 2013
Dr. Randy Brooks

Like a Parting Glance

by
Sarah E. Kisly

Introduction:

This collection was written over the course of the spring semester of my sophomore year in college, when I was part of Dr. Randy Brooks’ Global Haiku Class, 2013. Throughout these months, I learned what it meant to be a successful haiku writer, reader, and enthusiast.

One feature of this delicate art that stood out particularly prominently to me was the merging of nature and humanity in one short poem. Some authors are able to do this so powerfully, even to the point of completing the entire mood of a single haiku simply by including some non-human aspect of the world around us. It is at this moment where I feel that the haiku is most poignant, and most pure.

In my own work, one will often see inclusions of this type in an attempt to convey human emotion through a haiku—emotion so strong that naming it alone isn’t powerful enough, but some other phenomenon must be used to fully illustrate mood and feeling. These haiku are my heart, and I hope whoever reads them is able to connect from his or her heart, too. Thank you. 

laughing and pencil-rolling
down the hill
newlyweds

my mother’s embrace
the foundation
of this house

icicle sword fights
a puddle
on the kitchen floor

tickle-fight before dinner
my father laughs
the hardest

two slow blinks—
in cat that means
I love you

love note . . .
says I’m foxy
who wrote this?

asleep at the easel
the artist’s dreams
smell of turpentine

 
tray of watercolors        sunlight on her heart
 

grandpa’s sweater—
the soft scent
of pine sap

steel gray sky
she watches
the raindrop race

in the lonely woods
she walks with God
owl wings whisper

midnight swim
moonlit droplets
on her cheek

Chinese take-out
we discuss
the meaning of life

tea and scones
Bible study ladies
join hands in prayer

a wish for her mom
floating in the air
like a parting glance

winter's chill
I sketch food
for the hungry birds

hoping recklessly,
she pushes past doubts
the rooster crows

signature haiku:

moonflower's opening
      memorizing her
      while she sleeps