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Book of the Week: Field: A Haiku Circle

eulert_field

Don Eulert, one of the founding editors of English-language haiku’s first journal, American Haiku, teaches psychology to aspiring doctors using haiku (see his interview on this site). Field is his most significant book, from AHA Books (1998).

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

Do you have a chapbook published 2009 or earlier you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details.

All haiku in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Tom Clausen, and are used with permission.


welcoming me home in just one room flowers
time outside time after a slow rain all night snail on the doorstep
a nail glows red in the fire pit ashes moon-set in fog
on the window sill leavings of wood ants winter morning sun
the big tin clock goes on talking to itself I click the door
the lighted window fire in moths' eyes this March night
one almond left in the yellow bowl we go on talking
once cut away this apple branch would leave what space?
what stopped them? those frogs going quiet like I meant to be
quail excited in dirt turned up by a gopher
rain in the granite grinding holes left by First People little sky mirrors
this shark's tooth fifteen million years old in better shape than mine
work pants earth-stains never quite wash out  from the knees
there's that crow again wheeling high in the wind pretending she's a hawk
stones not yet carried but see how they will look  walled around the house
in their box red geraniums blooming  beside the outhouse
all the stars we'd miss if we had a place inside to piss
rubbing it to nothing the last rag from a favorite old plaid shirt
she's still there (if you're looking for the cat) by the gopher hole
sunflowers too lining the road from the field watch sunset
guests warm their hands around the open fire a slow dancing
New Year's evening clearing the window shelf for next year's memories

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. welcoming me home
    in just one room
    flowers

    once cut away
    this apple branch would leave
    what space?

    by Don Eulert

    So true how flowers transform a room. “once cut away” reminds me of when my parents had to take down their apple tree. I gave my mom “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein (1964, Harper & Row, Author Copyright). Now the book is in this room.

    Ellen

  2. Two Don Eulert haiku that stick with me are ” time outside time” and ” on the window sill”. I think Shiki would have especially liked the latter.

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