April first had a sort-of-haiku poem in it, but today is actually National Haiku Day, so we have to write haiku today. The American form of the ancient Japanese tradition is a three-stanza syllable-count poem with lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. At its most basic, that’s it, but there are further rules to follow, if you want to take on that challenge:
Make the theme about nature
Focus on a very specific, clear image, and then add a second very crisp image
Use sensory words
One of the words in the poem gives a sense of the season of the year
The third line offers a surprise or twist or shift (often that second image)
Here’s my attempt for the morning:
Spring sun warms feathers.
Tiny sparrow hops, sees me.
The cat is also watching.
Gratitude List:
1. How sun shines on the green
2. How squirrels suddenly stop, and stand with their hands over their hearts, wide-eyed
3. How invigorating a morning shower feels
4. How everything is in bud, is in flower. Me, too. You, too.
5. How wise words enter the labyrinth of the heart.
May we walk in Beauty!
Sunday’s Messages:
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” ―Thomas Merton
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ―Thomas Merton
“We see quite clearly that what happens
to the nonhuman happens to the human.
What happens to the outer world
happens to the inner world.
If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur
then the emotional, imaginative,
intellectual, and spiritual life of the human
is diminished or extinguished.
Without the soaring birds, the great forests,
the sounds and coloration of the insects,
the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields,
the sight of the clouds by day
and the stars at night, we become impoverished
in all that makes us human.”
―Thomas Berry
“All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.” ―Joy Harjo
“We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.” ―Denise Levertov
“There are two types of people. Avoid them.” —Mary Engelbreit
Mockingbird Chronicles 