A Few Haiku

Once a week, Rebecca drinks a different type of alcohol and writes a rough draft – she edits sober. Last week was Gin. This week…

 I’ve been waking up early to write down what I’m thankful for.

I do it the way a 2^nd grader might… I’m thankful for my mom. I’m thankful for having a pillow. I’m thankful for my roof. But even with a roof, my immune system is sinking with the weather. So this week I’m writing soft core on cough syrup.

Yeah, the alcoholic kind. I don’t cheat. I even took more than the recommended dosage.

_

A girl I know from school is at a coffee shop. In screeches of heavy chairs and voices, cars driving and rain beating hard over us, we sit next to each other. Even surrounded by humidity and rain, she has stale hair. Which, without much volume, is miraculously hectic. We covered the weather and are stretching to find another thing to have in common.

“I sometimes talk to my boyfriend in haiku,” she says. “It distills our thoughts.”

“I love haikus,” I barely remember learning this in middle school.

She smiles, “There’s no ‘s’ in the plural form.”

“Oh.”

“Help me,” she pushes her phone across the table. “I can’t think of anything.”

The conversation has me doing serious mental yoga. Three lines… clipped phrases. I have no idea how to write these.

“I can’t do it off the cuff,” I say.

“You’re right. A good haiku takes time and introspection.”

After this encounter, I see haiku everywhere on the web. It’s considered a hobby, a category all it’s own. There’s poetry and then there’s haiku.

They’re not all brief meditations on butterflies or the beauty of a puddle. Contemporary haiku is out there  – on welfare, baseball, a Muu Muu House series (a personal favorite), Bones Journal. Poets still write simply in about seventeen syllables. Three lines. They’re attractive – short with negative space, words breathe a little.

I’ve been trying to write a thorough haiku everyday instead of my sloppy I’m-Thankful-Fors list.

I’m not very good at them but it wakes my mind up in the morning. Create and refine a simple moment, which can be recognized by anyone on any day. Plainly. Be thankful.

Stay tuned for next week.