Global Haiku • Fall 2017
Dr. Randy Brooks

renku:

Patiently Waiting

by
Austin Taylor
Alex Pratt
Benjamin Maynard

•

Wilted Flower

by
Austin Taylor
Alex Pratt
Benjamin Maynard

Back to My Homework

by
Benjamin Maynard

The title of this haiku collection is Back to my Homework for a couple of reasons. The first is that one of my signature haiku includes the line "back to my homework." In this haiku, the student is ignoring the distractions, on especially large one, that naturally occur when one is trying to get work done. This is never an easy task and I applaud anyone who can easily go back to their homework after being distracted.

Another reason for the title is that writing haiku has always been a mental break from my more rigorous assignments. When I write haiku I do not feel like I am ever doing homework. It is a time to relax, appreciate my surroundings, and let my mind wander free. Writing haiku has never felt like work and I always dread finishing my haiku as that means I have to go back to my homework.

I am relatively new to haiku and have included these haiku in my collection for the simple reason that they are some of my favorite haiku that I have written so far. These are also haiku that my professor and classmates have enjoyed most throughout my semester of writing haiku. I thank you for your time in reading through this collection and hope you enjoy some of my haiku.

Sunday afternoon
slicing the fresh flesh
of watermelon

rumblings
of another war.
back to my homework

breathe in
breathe out
can't touch my toes

complex equation
reach for my calculator
dead battery

father and son
go for a final walk
purple sky

Friday night
mom and aunt yelling
Sweet Caroline

sitting in jail
going nowhere
snake eyes

home from school
Christmas tree
already up

middle of night
I peek out the window
blanket of snow

top of the mountain
the rest of my life
with her

two fish in a tank
does either know
how to drive it

authentic Mexican restaurant
the boy orders
chicken nuggets

baseball mitt up
too late
black eye

Sushi

My Papa and I woke up early one Saturday morning to prepare for a fishing trip. We packed sandwiches, chips, and a couple sodas in a cooler, grabbed our tackle box and fishing rods and hopped into the truck. We arrived at my Papa's friend's pond and prepared to start fishing. We fished all morning long, having minimal luck. We only caught a couple fish but none were big enough fish to keep and eat. When lunch time rolled around I began to get discouraged. However, my Papa, being the positive guy he is, told me not to get discouraged, that we would catch some fish. Surprisingly, that afternoon, we caught many more fish than we did in the morning. It must've been the worms we decided to use! Either that or it was a stroke of good luck, probably the worms though! Once we finally started catching fish that we're edible we had to keep them somewhere so they wouldn't die. We aren't fancy by any means so all we had was a fish stringer. A fish stringer allows the fisherman to string the fish and keep them alive by attaching them to the stringer in the water. By the end of the afternoon we had 9 or 10 fish that we were going to take home to fry. After we packed up our bags to go home, we went to the edge of the pond to get our fish out of the water. We were excited, especially after such a disappointing morning, that we had caught that many fish and were going to be able to eat them for dinner that night. However, when we pulled the stringer out of the water, we had 9 or 10 half-eaten fish, not 9 or 10 good-sized fish that we had put on the stringer early that day. Apparently, the turtles in the pond wanted fish for dinner as well. All the fish that we caught, were gone. Talk about disappointment. That day was one of the most disappointing days I can remember, we struggled in the morning and then once we did catch some fish, the turtles stole them from us.

no fish
ten fish
a turtle ate our fish

Benjamin Maynard

My favorite haibun was entitled Sushi Simply put, it was about a vivid memory they had about going fishing on a Saturday morning with their grandpa. I liked that this was so relatable - and that reading about their memory pulled on my own memories of doing this same thing. Additionally, the bright, naturist visuals are later contrasted by the humor that the author inserts. There is something intrinsically funny in the sentence, "that day was one of the most disappointing days I can remember." It's funny because they're taking on an almost-childlike attitude towards this day. I love it. Furthermore, their haiku. The haiku is also mirroring this childlike view. The haiku is very true to the story but also very unique, like reading a Dr. Seuss poem. ~Mackenzie

The haibun that I really liked out of the list of them was the story titled “Sushi”. I really enjoyed this story because I can just imagine the frustration and the different levels of emotion that the author went through as the day wore on. As someone who also enjoys fishing, I can understand the frustration that the author went through in the morning. I have gone through whole days where I only catch one or two fish the entire day. Then, as I continued reading, I could feel my own excitement rising with the author's, as they started to and continued to catch more fish. Like the author however, my excitement was met with disappointment as the story concluded. I did find the story comical however because that is something that I have never experienced in my life. ~Alex P.