Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Wind in the Trees

elliott_wind

David Elliott’s work has a consistently quiet, confidential, grounded feel to it, from his earliest, as in this collection from AHA Press in 1992, to the present day.

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

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




Just two notes
happy with them
phoebe on a budding branch


April sun
weathered plank drying
at the pond's edge



One last push
life thrust
into this slippery world


Moment-of-birth face
wrinkled old man
come back again



Sunlight through pines
one spiderweb filament
floats across the trail


Between two mountains
the wings of a gliding hawk
balancing sunlight


Wind at the summit—
crumbling stone and blue lichen
hanging on


A wedge of geese
opens
the sky


Honking overhead—
three geese
trying to catch up


Some year
they won't find me here...
returning geese


No one answers...
between the rings
faint laughter


Getting another blanket
mothballs
in moonlight


Below zero
but this week the sun shines
right on the kitchen table


All these weeks
my bootprints
frozen in mud


Hard to be some—
one in all
this snow falling


Sanding the old floor
hitting a pocket of pitch—
smell of pine


Peeling an orange
tiny puffs of juice
catch the light


Wind in the trees... nothing left unsaid


In the sunken rowboat
passing clouds


A steady wind blows
cloud shadows up the mountain
and off the cliff


The gong fades
swallows flying
out from the eaves


So many boulders
in the stream     all of the water
finding its way

This Post Has 12 Comments

  1. My favorite of the haiku selections above would have to be ” Wind at the summit—”.
    This Elliott poem has a painterly touch & good sounds.

  2. I agree with Chris, and also wonder why such incredibly short verses should seem wordy within the poetry world, haiku in particular?

    I enjoy every well-written style of haiku from 17-English-language syllable approaches to those with less than six words. A well-written poem is a well-written poem and so is haiku.

    It’s been a great journey to see so many haiku from the old century amongst the amazing work that is being produced in the last few years.

    Alan, With Words

    re:

    Chris Patchel July 11, 2013 at 3:28 pm
    “These poems are wordier than what is in vogue, or what I usually favor, but in his hands their length gives them some advantages I envy.”

  3. These poems are wordier than what is in vogue, or what I usually favor, but in his hands their length gives them some advantages I envy.

  4. Good stuff. I once owned a copy of this book. It went missing a good many years ago yet my favorite poems in it I still know by heart.

  5. Adding my “wonderful” and “beautiful” to the comments about David Elliott’s book with AHA Press.

    His haiku:

    Below zero
    but this week the sun shines
    right on the kitchen table

    is how I feel here every January. Where I live in Wisconsin, summer has just arrived, and the days feel a little shorter already. How wonderful to capture the light for a moment and watch it change . . . timeless and new every year. Thank you.

  6. Pure excellence!

    Thank all of you.

    sincerely,

    Gene

    A haiku is like when you wake up in the middle of a
    dream and within that spit second an entire lifetime
    passes by.

  7. What a truly beautiful collection. I feel as though I just came home from a retreat. Many thanks to David for granting permission for us to share his vision of the world — and to Tom for his part in that gift. –Billie

  10. I agree with my good friend in England 🙂 They are indeed small gems to enjoy over and over.

  11. Elliott-san’s right on the edge of Whitman’s merge in the snow haiku…so many true seeing haiku.

    -Patrick

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