HAIKU DIALOGUE – Finding peace and contemplation… exercising in a park

Finding peace and contemplation… with Guest Editor Marietta McGregor

At times in our lives, fast-moving events of our day-to-day existence may become overwhelming. Between work and family responsibilities, daily needs and doomscrolling, days rush by in a breakneck blur and we sometimes end the week with a sense of ‘where did that go?’ We’re surrounded by the wonders of our shared universe. Maybe it’s time to become immersed in the enjoyment of one aspect of this spectacular world which amazes, delights and refreshes us. We can marvel at the night sky or clouds by day, cheer a ladybug as it climbs a twig and opens its wings, dangle our feet in a cool river, rest in a tree’s benevolent shade, stroke velvety green moss, smell ozone freshness at the coast, crunch through frosty grass, listen to morning birdsong, taste a last autumn apple. Small pauses in quotidian life may be devoted to living slower, using every sense, and sharing our pleasure through poetry. Simple gifts.

Each week for the next few weeks there will be a photographic prompt on the theme of ‘Finding peace and contemplation. . .’ with images capturing moments when we might seek inspiration if the going gets tough. I look forward to reading your personal response to the moments you’ve discovered.

next week’s theme: … in a city

Tokyo is the quintessential urban environment — skyscrapers, buzzing shopping precincts and eternally busy subways. Some of its localities such as Shibuya Crossing are renowned for how fast and furious they are. But not all of the city pulses to the same beat. I took this shot in Hama-rikyū Gardens, where the shades of old Edo survive in today’s Tokyo. Not far from the bustling centre, modern office buildings loom over serene gardens. How do you find peace and tranquility in your city or town? Whether you live in the inner city, a quiet suburb, or only visit a city occasionally, we invite your haiku about how you seek calm in a city.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday October 23, 2021.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) With your poem, please include any special formatting requirements & your name as you would like it to appear in the column. A few haiku will be selected for commentary each week. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

below is Marietta’s commentary for… exercising in a park:

This week was a virtual walk in the park – thank you all for making exercise more enjoyable than I could have imagined! Jogging, tai chi and yoga were popular themes, and poets also sailed pond yachts, skipped stones and imagined hopscotch games. Some poets had encounters with animals, including herons, skylarks and dragonflies, which led them to pause their steps for a moment, and perhaps resume their walk at a slower pace. Grateful thanks to The Haiku Foundation for hosting Haiku Dialogue each week, and my special thank you to Kathy and Lori for all of their support.

woods walk
the silence deepened
by a falling chestnut

Donal O’Farrell
Dublin, Ireland

Line 1 sets the scene here with two one-syllable words, quite slow and measured in their rhythm. The line ends in a cut or kireji, a pause in the haiku’s sound which allows the reader to begin to hear the silence. The season is autumn. The deciduous trees have not yet lost all their leaves, and a leafy canopy closes overhead. Chestnuts are ripening into heaviness. A solitary walker, enjoying the hushed forest, pauses to listen more attentively for furtive rustlings of small creatures. Instead, into the silence there is a faint clonk as a ripe nut hits the path. As the poet continues to listen, the contrast between ‛sound’ and ‛no-sound’ becomes marked in line 2, with the use of the double-stressed word ‛deepened’, and internal assonance. We find ourselves straining our ears with the poet, waiting for the next chestnut to fall.

morning jog
I bump into
incoming spring

Saumya Bansal
India

The freshness of this haiku appealed to me. Pandemic lockdowns for many have resulted in restricted travel out of our own neighbourhoods. Where I live in Canberra this has led to a focus on trying to stay fit within a limited area and for a few hours. With everyone out and about in numbers, either for their permitted exercise period or walking the dog, favourite jogging routes can become congested. While everyone tries to stay distanced, sometimes collisions happen. Also, with so many out and about, it’s not unusual to bump into an acquaintance. But here, the jogger does not come upon another person as may be expected from line 2. Rather, in line 3 we learn of the poet’s encounter with familiar older friends – the heady scents, lush growth and birdsong of a new season.

arm-in-arm
around the moat
back in time

Helen Buckingham
Wells, Somerset, UK

Moats are not exclusive to grand British manors and castles. Modest farmhouses of yeoman farmers also followed the fashion. Nature writer Roger Deakin in his classic, Waterlog, writes of swimming in the spring-fed moat beside his rustic Elizabethan farmhouse. Moats could serve not only as a means of encircling defence but also could be a storehouse for out-of-season produce, or be stocked with fish. In this ‛time-travel’ haiku we’re whisked through history. Two people, friends, family members or lovers, stroll around a body of water which may have existed in some form or another for centuries. We imagine a flicker in the space-time continuum as they transform from jeans- and sweatshirt-wearing 21st century people to a couple in crinolines and velvet breeches. Like Bashō’s swinging bridge wth creepers, in this haiku moment the moat bridges time, but is itself timeless.

& here are the rest of the selections:

breezy shoreline
a turtle-shaped bubble
hares ahead

Richard Matta
San Diego, California

 

vacation
the rental bike and i
meditating

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

hide and seek
with my child
finding Neverland again

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, Wa. USA

 

park—
my dog trains me
to throw him a bone

Aljoša Vuković
Croatia, Šibenik

 

autumn breeze
sways in slow motion
the tai-chi group

Hla Yin Mon
Yangon, Myanmar

 

running in place
the casuarinas never
stop nodding

Anitha Varma
Kerala, India

 

doing sit ups—
a maple leaf falls
on my face

Dennys Cambarau
Sardinia, Italy

 

clear morning
all mine until the jogger
comes along

Tony Williams
Scotland, UK

 

i watch
my husband paddles out
with his own thoughts

Connie Pittman Ramsey
Irving, TX USA

 

Joggers Park
a red dragonfly pauses
before me

Lakshmi Iyer
Kerala, India

 

woodland path
unseen movement
unheard sound

barbara gardino
Virginia

 

evening walk . . .
the silhouettes
of a fading sun

Jeff Leong
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

 

pine  bamboo  plum
three old friends of winter
greet sled  mittens  cocoa

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

 

bird watching
a gator’s nose
rises from the lake

Pris Campbell
US

 

early morning—
no one else
walking this road

Lafcadio Orlovsky
USA

 

park walkway
tasting a crumb of bread
left for the birds

Jackie Chou
United States

 

her last walk
we stop a minute
to feel the bark

Maurice Nevile
Australia

 

camera and me
we feed the squirrels
with acorns

Ljiljana Dobra
Croatia, Sibenik

 

city park
a frisbee sails over
my sun salutation

Terri French
RV-USA

 

hushed park—
tai chi player’s hands
draw nothingness

Teiichi Suzuki
Japan

 

between the sun
and my sweat
wild orchids

Tiffany Shaw-Diaz
Centerville, Ohio, USA

 

skipping stone
one after another
broken thoughts

Hifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

 

jogging track
the fragrance I wait for
runs past

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

in sync
with the dawn breeze
tai-chi hands

Ravi Kiran
India

 

a huntsman
crawls up my tree
park yoga

Louise Hopewell
Australia

 

in the forest
just autumn and me
zen moments

Zdenka Mlinar
Hrvatska

 

yoga tree pose
circling my roots
a stray cat

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Alabama, USA

 

snow-capped mountains—
only mud and stones
under my feet

Nicole Pottier
France

 

each receding wave
takes away
a bit of me

Ram Chandran
India

 

morning jog
only the early birds
witness my wheezing

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

a walk with dad
the point and click
of his cane

Pat Davis
Pembroke, NH USA

 

grass widow—
loop number seven
around the pond

Roberta Beary
Co Mayo Ireland

 

sunburst—
skylarks over stubbled fields
waymarking

Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom

 

skipping stones
the ripples
of kids’ laughter

Anna Yin
Ontario, Canada

 

tai chi in the park
everyone embraces
the moon

Sue Courtney
Orewa, New Zealand

 

lock-down—
playing hopscotch on the alley
some chestnuts

Mirela Brăilean
Romania

 

Sunday morning
old men racing
pond yachts

Alan Peat
Biddulph, United Kingdom

 

park bench
strangers walking
on my old paths

Edna B
Rensselaer, NY

 

finally
a day at the park
the roar of leaf blowers

John S Green
Bellingham, WA USA

 

a thirty year old
learning to ride the bike
city of angels

Kanjini Devi
The Far North, Aotearoa NZ

 

skipping stones
sharing the flat ones
with my friend

Rehn Kovacic
Mesa, AZ

 

night hike . . .
the moonlit owl
on a branch

Marilyn Humbert
Australia

 

tracing a pond
the second time around
jogs my memory

Peter Jastermsky
Morongo Valley, California, USA

 

folded yoga mat
I unroll
my to do list . . .

Priti Khullar
India

 

always and always
bare feet
on the gravel road

Nani Mariani
Melbourne, Australia

 

surya namaskar
the clouds reshape
along with me

Kavya Janani. U
India

 

long walk
I get distracted by
the ice cream vendor

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

changing season
once the hour aerobics
now a few stretches

Meera Rehm
UK

 

pond hockey
the echoing clatter
of f-words

Myron Arnold
Canada

 

tai chi park—
passersby speak
in whispers

Nick T
Somerset, UK

 

river run the headwin(d)

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

nods and smiles
with morning companions—
daily ginko

Susan Lee Roberts
Sacramento, CA, USA

 

rope skipping
the whole world moves
up and down

Xiaoou Chen
Kunming, China

 

jogging timer
a butterfly’s sight
deflects the interval

Richa Sharma
India

 

sculpture park—
some steps
in Lao Tzu’s shadow

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

an ant
walking home
carries a hill

Amrutha Prabhu
Bengaluru, India

 

stretching skywards
a new day unfurls
with possibilities

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

 

leaning on my cane
I watch all the kids
run around the park

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA

 

a stretch and a sway
from the silver maple
sunrise yoga

Margaret Tau
New Bern, NC

 

outdoor gym
avoiding the chin-up bars
claimed by a spider

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

peace park
scent of wisteria
evokes a sadness

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

morning run
a gust of leaves
keeps pace

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO United States

 

spring morning
first in the park this year
yogi lotus

Wiesław Karliński
Namysłów, Poland

 

low cloud
from walna to wetherlam
exorcising the mind

simonj
UK

 

walking the rail trail
I lose my train of thought
between mile markers

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY

 

at the park
training the designer dog
to go fetch

Carol Reynolds
Sydney, Australia

 

jogging park
some faces smiling
some not smiling

Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India

 

the Thames
not rushing
to catch the rain

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

 

stillness—
the oak and I
breathe

Zahra Mughis
Lahore, Pakistan

 

baby with walker
and grandmother with walker
walking in the park

Stoianka Boianova
Bulgaria

 

lockdown
the undulating delights
of a deserted golf course

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

 

steps in the woods—
crumpled leaves
under the shoes

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

spring’s first turtle
first shirtless boy
on roller blades

Tim Cremin
Massachusetts

 

shore—
walking in the footsteps
of my daughter

bagnasciuga—
camminando sulle orme
di mia figlia

Maria Teresa Piras
Serrenti Italia

 

building little houses
on the lake shore
hopscotch

Mircea Moldovan
Romania

 

beautiful girl—
grandfather turns away
bit by bit

Krzysztof Kokot
Poland

 

lost sheep
running through the grass
my shadow

Maya Daneva
The Netherlands

 

milestone spin class
I advance a decade
on the leaderboard

Peg Cherrin-Myers
Franklin, Michigan

 

daily speed-walk
along the canal
a heron so still

Claire Ninham
North Yorkshire, UK

 

morning walk
a bee weaves
among the jacarandas

Bona M Santos
Los Angeles, CA

 

garbage mound—
on a torn yoga mat
sits a street dog

A Thiagarajan
Mumbai India

 

mindfulness
a walk
in the prairie park

Susan Farner
United States

 

rising moon
healing
with a medicine ball

Luisa Santoro
Rome, Italy

 

usual shoes
on the familiar path
new tree roots

Helene Guojah
UK

 

meditation ganga shines with the fading sunshine

Devoshruti Mandal
Varanasi, India

 

park yoga class
grassy lawn
itching

Bidyut Prabha Gantayat
Bhubaneswar, India

 

carriage roads
biking around
the horse manure

Carly Siegel Thorp
Massachusetts, USA

 

sunset’s approach. . . .
watching them walk
into the future

B.A. France
Maryland, USA

 

white sails
grace the pier promenade
peace lilies

Melanie Vance
USA

 

morning tai chi—
a slow motion of butterflies
on the park

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

saluto al sole . . .
sorgendo dalla rugiada
a piedi scalzi

i greet the sun . . .
rising from the dew
barefoot

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna Italia

 

a child’s laugh
scattering
the pigeons

Orense Nicod
Paris France

 

Beaver Marsh
a cyclist whizzes past
the observation deck

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

yoga in the park
all the trees casting
unteachable shadows

Florin C. Ciobica
Romania

 

beach yoga
her fall creates
a new pose

Nancy Brady
Huron, Ohio, USA

 

jogging
a stray dog
follows me

Cristina Apetrei
Romania

 

billowing fog
shivers through my sweatshirt—
Shoreline Park

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

mountain getaway—
giving asanas
a broader scope

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

out of order
the lift is my close
personal trainer

Mona Iordan
Romania

 

ginko walk . . .
measuring mileage
with our breath

Barrie Levine
Wenham MA USA

 

morning walk
I miss greeting
the old man

Mohammad Azim Khan
Peshawar Pakistan

 

the new norm
masked joggers
keep their distance

Didimay D. Dimacali
Norwalk, California USA

 

greenway walk
a night heron
slows my steps

John Zheng
Mississippi, USA

 

shavasana . . .
adrift with
the clouds

Priti Aisola
Hyderabad, India

 

zoom day lectures
in front of my computer
10,000 steps

Kath Abela Wilson
United States

 

broken fit bit found
half way around the duck pond
right twice a day

Ronald Scully
Seattle WA

 

my morning workout
much easier here
Martian dome park

Deborah P Kolodji
Temple City, California

Guest editor Marietta McGregor is a fourth-generation Tasmanian who has made her home between Australia’s national capital Canberra and the scenic south coast of New South Wales for over four decades. A lover of the natural world since childhood, she went on to study botany and zoology, and has worked as palynologist, garden designer, science journalist, editor, university tutor, education manager, and grants developer for the national wildlife collection. A photography and travel enthusiast since retiring, she enjoys capturing fine detail of fleeting moments. She came late to haiku, which appealed for its close observation and poetic expression of ephemeral experience. Her haiku, haibun and haiga have been widely published, have won awards and appear in anthologies.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

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