The Haiku Foundation Forums

"Compassion is direct engagement with life, and, in terms of haiku, when effectively actualized is at its heart.  I would say, then, that I am challenged to keep my heart open in this way as I walk through this world."

One Buddhist definition of compassion is "wisdom in action." 

In the past few weeks, thinking about this forum and reading A Thousand and One Arabian Nights (talk about experience+imagination=truth) for the first time, I have been looking for haiku that challenge my person-in-action.

Here two of Jim Kacian's that did, from his book where i leave off (from my notes to the Field Note):


                   the nightingale sings his throat open

Martha Graham says, Keep the channels open.  Even in the dark, even when you are singing someone else's tune...the body will body...

                the war has a new name today jim

I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,/ a remote important region in all who talk:/though we could fool each other, we should consider–/...the darkness around us is deep .- William Stafford, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other"

Cool, Don – I hadn't noticed the parallels between your Nagasaki poem and the old pond.

The posts in general, and in particular, Don and Tom's explanation of insight/imagination has helped deepen, or quicken, my appreciation for this exhilaratingly challenging poem:

late winter –
the dragonfly world
of a snowflake

- Donna Fleischer, Under The Basho 2104 Haiku Contest

Here, would the insight would be the dragonfly?  Just as Basho/ Basho's reader/the frog experiences an "old pond" essence from the sound of water, Donna/ Donna's reader/the snowflake distills late winter to a "dragonfly world."  This stopped my mind for a moment.

Or is it late winter?  The dragonfly and the snowflake both experience late winter-ness, a kind of urgent stroke of impermanence.

...I've been thinking about vertical axes, fractals, Cid Corman's "Life is poetry/and poetry is life – O,/awaken children!" and Kabbalist Wallace Berman's transmission-film, "Art Is Love Is God"...

Maybe it's a twin-insight poem.  The polarities give it a sense of the infinite and eternal.  When, through re- and rereading it, I experience a feathery ice crystal experiencing its first/last day on Earth as a winged dragon with compound eyes and killer jaws, I could almost burst with love and hunger for this life.

Darkness releasing a star, indeed.

PS Two hours later: guess who just spent a while flying around in the big white wintry skylight?