Zen Haiku • Fall 2022
Dr. Randy Brooks

Writing in Ash

by
Page Shields

Haiku is the art of moments. To write in this art form is to pick up a pen and let it lead. Whether you’re writing about the now or times gone by or times you will never see, it does not matter: Still, you are completely immersed in the sensory experience that such a scene supplies.

It is, of course, not easy. It’s a challenge to ignore the hundred different directions life pulls us in at any one time in order to focus on one specific scene. But it isn’t the eyebrow-creasing, knuckle-cracking, tense sort of focus. It is looking inward instead of out to the world, because once you acknowledge what connects you to a moment, you know how to open it up to others.

Over the course of this fall, I have developed above all else this skill of reflection. I’ve found that writing about super-specifics actually makes it easier for others to connect to your haiku than any vague, general poem would. It’s like taking a super zoomed-in picture—it’s a closeup, yes, but every viewer is confident that it depicts something different.

As you step into my collection of haiku, I encourage you to embrace this same paradoxical kind of balance—focus gently; share your selfishness; see your own personal memories in poetry about a life that isn’t your own. Creating a landscape out of a snapshot is not a science, but if it were, it would be a theory that we, as writer and reader, are proving together.
Enjoy your journey.

moonlight
smoke flowing
into my notebook

sticky greenhouse sky
watering daisies and
the birds drink too

fabric softener
the winter chill
draws us together

stiletto footprints in the snow
still slippery
the morning after

empty nest
one egg
uncracked

book club
lighting incense
on the back patio

night time
your eyelashes cradle
the snow

hands clasped
the reluctant last check
off the bucket list

grandma's favorite song
traces of love
in a three-ring binder

a stale candle
and mac and cheese.
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