HAIKU DIALOGUE – Finding peace and contemplation… in worn, imperfect and transient things… cast iron kettle

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday September 18, 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Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry.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 in worn, imperfect and transient things… cast iron kettle:

My thanks for your generous responses to the cast iron kettle. So often, a three-dimensional object sparks a vivid memory. The old vessel has drawn out family stories from all over the world, of parents and grandparents and the keepsakes they leave for the next generations. Treasured mementoes are brought out for celebrations or are used for their original purpose, with many recollections attached. This week’s poems could be characterised as senryu, which often lack a kigo and address the human condition. You can read more about the senryu form in The Haiku Foundation’s Digital Library: https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/1219
Thanks again to THF for supporting Haiku Dialogue, and especially to Kathy and Lori for their hard work. And please take the opportunity to respond with your thoughts about the posted poems.

ghostly fingers
play ragtime
gran’s pianola

Louise Hopewell
Australia

When I was young, many Australian families owned a pianola, or player piano. This was a self-playing instrument operated mechanically by foot pedals, using music recorded as perforated notes on paper rolls. The pianola took pride of place in the living room, a focal point for all the family where everyone gathered for concerts of favourites like ‛You are my Sunshine’, ‛Tennessee Waltz’ and ‛Tiger Rag’. This haiku, or senryu, captures the fun children had as they happily pumped away at the foot pedals and made the piano keys move as if by unseen hands. Line 1 also conveys a sense of melancholy and of time passing. Large, dark and solid pieces of furniture, few pianolas survive in modern homes. And those who once played them are, themselves, long gone.

Red Hat Society
a wolf whistle
from the teapot

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

Wolf whistles may be politically incorrect these days so it’s amusing to think a kettle has the temerity to come out with an admiring tootle. This poem begins with the name of a global support organization originally created to bring together women of similar ages in a spirit of fun, friendship and support. Red Hat Society members don their namesake headgear, often with purple clothes. Here we imagine the poet is describing someone preparing for an outing or get-together, perhaps having breakfast before a pleasant day out with her cohorts. The kettle appears to approve of the red hat! Modern English language senryu tend to deal with the foibles of daily life, illuminating our day-to-day existence. I wonder how many poems have been written about the Red Hat Society?

between stations Pop’s workshop radio

P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada

A member of my own family once bought an old house where the former engineer owner had fitted out the garage as an elaborate workshop. After his death the workshop was left untouched. Everything there reflected the idiosyncrasies of a person who was no longer with us. In the five short words of this poem, the poet depicts a father or grandfather, a handyman who spent time working on projects in a back shed with a radio playing for company. We don’t know if it’s a bakelite wireless or a battered transistor radio, but it’s probably not something more modern. There’s the sense that the radio’s owner left his workshop, and no one has been back, maybe out of sadness. The radio sits forgotten until one day someone idly switches it on, only to hear static.

cast iron kettles
in the museum gift shop
coffee at Starbucks

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

How often does this story play out in museum shops? This wry poem contrasts old with new, pointing up the irony of places that sell ‛old’ artefacts which are often cheap reproductions. When the visitor leaves the gift shop there’s a coffee chain waiting, where you would not find something as old-fashioned as a kettle. The poem uses a 5/7/5 form. Haiku were once taught as a poetic form of 17 syllables, in a short/long/short structure, but this is rarely used now. Most commonly, haiku are between 10-14 syllables, which correspond to the 17 ‛sounds’ in Japanese haiku. This poem avoids padding with adjectives and adverbs that can overload a poem when trying to maintain a 17-syllable count.

& here are the rest of the selections:

ancient clay jar
collecting rainwater
before me, after me

Christopher Seep
United States

 

moving from home
the look she gave me
with the towels

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

brass kettle
pouring my heart out
to my reflection

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, CA USA

 

a spider runs out
of the old kettle’s spout
attic inspection

Anitha Varma
Kerala, India

 

grandma’s pie dish
so much love
and a hairline crack

Alan Peat
United Kingdom

 

an old iron
through dad’s pants—
memories evaporate

Aljoša Vuković
Croatia, Šibenik

 

a snail shell
in the old watering can
drought

Françoise Maurice
Draguignan, France

 

old kettle
flowers instead
of whistles

Jeff Leong
Malaysia

 

through the spout
a money plant shoots out
backyard junkyard

Lakshmi Iyer
Kerala, India

 

old juicer
breakfast memory
a heart squeeze

Lyntha Nelson
Colorado, USA

 

grandma’s house—
in the rusty kettle
wildflowers

Maria Teresa Sisti
Italy

 

sil batta
the guests praise my chutney
for the first time

(sil batta was an ancient grinding stone that was used to make wet pastes like masala and chutney.)

Kavya Janani. U
India

 

grandma’s attic
I’m looking for my favorite
music box

Tsanka Shishkova
Bulgaria

 

the old scoop
still dishing out
fond memories

Helen Ogden
Pacific Grove

 

mom’s cup—
on the sideboard still
the cold of winter

Dennys Cambarau
Sardinia, Italy

 

annual cleanup
at grandfather’s attic
all still useful

Wiesław Karliński
Namysłów, Poland

 

a kotatsu
at the center of family—
distant old home

(kotatsu: a foot warmer with a quilt over it)

Teiichi Suzuki
Japan

 

cast iron griddle
hundreds and thousands
on the pikelets

Sue Courtney
Orewa, New Zealand

 

whistling tea kettle
the sound of
past and present

Lafcadio Orlovsky
USA

 

tea break . . .
spilling out
secrets

Aparna Pathak
India

 

strong rain
smell of earthen kettle
from ginger tea

Sudebi Singha
Kolkata, India

 

old kettle—
memories of summer gone
still warm

Nikola Đuretić
Zagreb, Croatia

 

now full
of tea roses
the pierced kettle

Orense Nicod
Paris, France

 

smoldering charcoal
Mom is ironing
childhood memories

Nani Mariani
Australia

 

charcoal samovar—
a savor of tea
in exile

Nicole Pottier
France

 

tea pouring . . .
slowly our grudges
evaporate

Richa Sharma
India

 

old rocking chair
my daughter’s turn
to sing lullabies

Sherry Grant
Auckland, New Zealand

 

a clatter of copper pots
my childhood autumns
making jam

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

joining
the family banter
grandfather’s clock

Ravi Kiran
India

 

grandma’s steel
colander—
what she never shared

Richard Matta
San Diego, California

 

grandma’s tea kettle
the dreams
still the same

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, Wa. USA

 

autumn dawn—
holding the mug with both hands
the jasmine pearls unfurl

Sam Blair
North Oregon Coast

 

winter breakfast
our pot belly warms
our bellies

Pris Campbell
Lake Worth, FL U.S.

 

kerosene lamp—
the labors of my father
in its dim light

Maria Teresa Piras
Serrenti – Italy

 

cast iron skillet
with each passing year
better and better

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA

 

hand-me-down laptop
good job I know
where the E S and Ns are

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

I knead flour
in mom-in-law’s paraat—
large as her heart

(paraat: heavy-bottomed brass platter traditionally used in Indian kitchens for kneading flour for chapatis.)

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

 

apple cobbler baked
in the scouts’ old Dutch oven
no second serving

Ba Duong
Florida, USA

 

teapot shards
glued together
dad’s shaky hand

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

 

the old rolling pin
in the dusty attic . . .
granny’s Sunday buns

Natalia Kuznetsova
Russia

 

peach tree in bloom—
an old coffee pot
on the cupboard

pesco in fiore—
una vecchia caffettiera
sulla credenza

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

the bent prongs
of my fork
this hard land

Maurice Nevile
Canberra, Australia

 

dawn moon—
tea kettle
song

Kathleen Vasek-Trocmet
Texas, USA

 

cast iron kettle
the weight of a memory

martin gottlieb cohen
Egg Harbor, NJ U.S.

 

new teapot
boiling away
the past

Rehn Kovacic
Mesa, AZ

 

still in bud
pale pink tulips
from blue rain boots

Anna Yin
Ontario, Canada

 

printing copies
of the copy
of a hundred year old photo

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Huntsville, Alabama

 

garage sale
I rescue the old kettle
full of stories

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

brass pitcher
the dance of river waves
fifty years ago

ਪਿੱਤਲ਼ ਦੀ ਗਾਗਰ
ਪੰਜਾਹ ਸਾਲ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਵੀ
ਲਹਿਰਾਂ ਦਾ ਨਾਚ

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

kintsugi
blue morning glories bloom
from the repaired dish

John Zheng
Mississippi

 

losing a whistle
for a rattle
me and my old kettle

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

 

embers in the field
between peppers and onions
bacon on skewer

Minko Tanev
Bulgaria

 

still lingering
the scent of grandma
on the rusty kettle

Padmini Krishnan
Singapore

 

cast iron kettle—
my only souvenir
from childhood

Ana Drobot
Romania

 

fresh coffee beans
in the copper grinder
the smell of yesteryear

Mona Iordan
Romania

 

sentimental purchase
one Bunyip hand mower
rests in peace

Carol Reynolds
Australia

 

mom is ‛gone’
from her cezve still
black coffee smells

mama je ‛otišla’
iz njezine džezve još
crna kava miriši

Mira Jungić
Sisak, Hrvatska

 

still trimming
the trees he left behind
papa’s bonsai shears

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA

 

grandpa’s spade
how many changes of handles
none of us remembers

Xiaoou Chen
Kunming, China

 

the kettle
awakens me
from the past

Jim Niffen
South Dakota USA

 

crystal vase
how we’re still arranging
for the future

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

Christmas time . . .
grandma’s nut cracker
again on the table

Meera Rehm
UK

 

loaded with logs
beside the fireplace—
nana’s washtub

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, CA

 

mother’s crafts scissors
cutting off the fringes
of bad memories

Vandana Parashar
India

 

boiling kettle
at a roadside dhaba—
fragrance of morning fog

Sanjuktaa Asopa
Belgaum, India

 

my reflection
from all those years
mama’s pots

Kanjini Devi
The Far North, Aotearoa NZ

 

chamber pot
I avoid the midnight
outhouse bats

JL Huffman
Blue Ridge Mountains of NC, USA

 

flour shaker—
still wishing for a taste of
great grandma’s cakes

Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom

 

lost in the attic
a rusty old kettle
and memories

Zahra Mughis
Lahore, Pakistan

 

early dusk
a dim fluorescent
in the anglepoise

simonj
UK

 

dented kettle
traces of the day
she went her way

Bona M. Santos
Los Angeles, CA

 

Mom’s recipe box
all the cards
by heart

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

used record store
the crackle of a needle
in a groove

Tim Cremin
Massachusetts

 

nostalgia
old coffee grinder
in the new kitchen

Zdenka Mlinar
Hrvatska

 

college canteen
the tea kettle is always
on the boil

Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India

 

grinding spices
in stone mortar pestle
she asks grandma’s name

Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

 

my sabi poems
on the burma teak table . . .
the patina of age

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

winter’s end—
the remnants of butter
in mom’s butter churn

Hifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

 

room window
in the kettle
a red rose

Slobodan Pupovac
Zagreb, Croatia

 

grandma’s cake pan
apple and cinnamon pie
every autumn

Elisa Allo
Zug, Switzerland

 

new safety norms—
I take a rest
with grandma’s recipe

Luisa Santoro
Rome, Italy

 

antique shop
the old brass cookware
now a shiny artefact

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

 

in his workshop—
grandpa’s tools
right where he left them

Christopher Peys
Los Angeles, CA

 

grandma’s jar
sourdough starter
all these years

Ronald Degler
United States

 

memories—
the sensei’s old brush
in my hands

Julia Guzmán
Córdoba Argentina

 

anniversary—
we use mother’s
scratched cutlery

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

faded recipes
the touch of a hand
on my shoulder

Helene Guojah
UK

 

the sigh
of an empty kettle . . .
social anxiety

Agus Maulana Sunjaya
Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia

 

grandpa’s coffee mug
the fine cracks
gently browned

Barrie Levine
Wenham MA USA

 

broken crayons
son’s first birthday
card for me

Priti Khullar
India

 

against my lip
the crack in the tea cup
familiar

Emily Fogle
California

 

mom’s sifter
hangs on my pegboard—
kitchen dusted in flour

Susan Lee Roberts
Sacramento, CA, USA

 

wildflowers . . .
in grandma’s teapot
it’s spring

fiori di campo . . .
nella teiera di nonna
è primavera

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna Italia

 

butter churn . . .
singing the rhythm
of the dasher

Margaret Walker
Lincoln, NE, USA

 

tracing the pattern
on the oilcloth
her blue veins

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY

 

her pincushion
always within reach
my mother-in-law

Lorraine A Padden
San Diego, CA USA

 

double treat . . .
mom’s recipe of halwa
in earthenware bowls

Sushama Kapur
Pune, India

 

kettle whistles
grandma’s call for tea with
her homemade biscuits

Kathleen Mazurowski
Chicago, IL

 

familiar smell
of reheated coffee
dad in the house

Susan Farner
United States

 

petals in the wind . . .
scrubbing the smoke off
the cast-iron kettle

Florin C. Ciobica
Romania

 

mango bonsai
thrives by the south window
ma’s cracked pasta bowl

Melanie Vance
USA

 

campfire
beef stew simmering
in a cast iron pot

Carol Judkins
Carlsbad, CA USA

 

cornbread bakes
in mom’s cast iron skillet
ham and beans

Nancy Brady
Huron, Ohio, USA

 

tarnished brass bell
ringing for help
his fall chill

Claire Vogel Camargo
United States

 

Grandma’s iron teakettle
given to my stepdaughter
not much time left

Genie Nakano
Gardena, CA

 

Grandma’s smart idea
each everyday tool tagged
with who should get it

Kath Abela Wilson
United States

 

ancient weed diggers
used less and less
by ancient weed diggers

Charles Harmon
Los Angeles, California, USA

 

broken spatula . . .
those years of flipping
dosas

Priti Aisola
Hyderabad, India

 

yard sale silhouettes
hanging in our living room
not our ancestors

Greer Woodward
Waimea, HI

 

reminding us
never forget the tough times
your cracked mirror

Susan Rogers
United States