HAIKU DIALOGUE – Looking Out – far from Earth – commentary

Looking Out with Guest Editor Marietta McGregor

The phrase ‛looking out’ can mean to be on the watch in case something unexpected should happen. We shout, “Look out!” if we see danger approaching. We build physical lookouts. They may take the form of tall steel and wooden towers used as vantage points to search for forest fires, a crow’s nest high on a ship’s mast, periscopes on a submarine, or wooden clifftop decks on headlands overlooking scenic coastal vistas for travelers’ photo stops. Human lookouts are people whose job it is to warn against hazards on land and at sea. ‛Looking out’ can also mean observing our surroundings. As well as our own finely tuned senses, we use a variety of instruments to help us see more of the world. Microscopes and electron microscopes allow us to scrutinise very small things. Medicine makes use of X-rays, ultraviolet light and radio waves for scanning the body. Binoculars and telescopes help us look out beyond the planet. From our earliest existence, we look outwards to the world for a holistic view, through our parents and other family members, teachers, books, radio, TV and the internet. Space beckons us. And, of course, we look out for each other, to help in times of need or stress.

Below is Marietta’s commentary for Looking Out – far from Earth:

floating in sunlight
a dust universe
I time travel

Debbie Sterling
Oregon, USA

Here the poet may be drowsing by a sunny window in an older family home, where shafts of sun strike in to illuminate the room and dust motes dance in the light. This situation, rather than causing stress about whether housework has been done properly, instead conjures up a magical alternative universe of tiny wandering worlds. While cosmic dust is not of the same composition as house dust, it’s often said we all may be formed out of stardust because our constituent elements were once created in the stars. Unbothered by a bit of dust in the air, the poet’s imagination takes flight into other times and spaces. This enjoyable haiku succeeds very well in discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Big Bang
yet no beginning in sight
of the cellotape

Vandana Parashar
India

In its fragment and phrase structure this poem brings together two elements we’re familiar with, one of them at least in theory. We’ve all been told how the observable universe began with a sudden colossal cosmic expansion of dense matter postulated to be about the size of a single human being, to spanning distances of 13.8 billion light years. And we’ve probably all wrestled with frustration when a roll of sticky tape resists our best efforts to scratch up a leading end. Humor has always been an important element of haiku, stemming from the earliest beginnings of Japanese comic verse known as haikai. According to Susumu Takiguchi, humor has tended to be sidelined in pursuit of “serious” haiku. He believes this may deprive poems of an essential “lightness.” Playing with scale, as this haiku does, is a way to bring lightness, and humor, to our poems. In three lines the poet transports us from an almost inconceivable sublime of expanding space to the very recognisable humdrum of our own small world, this juxtaposition of two very different “beginnings” making us laugh along with the poet.

summer night we are the darkness between fireflies’ flickers

Lorraine Schein
Sunnyside, Queens, NYC

Here I imagine the poet to be sitting outdoors at a campsite or in a garden, just after dark. We know it is early summer sometime before the solstice, as fireflies have begun to emerge from underground. It’s also probably humid, as fireflies, also called lightning bugs, prefer warm humid weather. Because of its moisture content, the night air settling round the poet and their companion/s feels soft and velvety. Enhancing the mood is the poet’s intense sensory concentration on individual flickers of light. The essence of the poem is a synesthetic contrast between states of being, as watchers intermittently transform into darkness itself, just as do the fireflies. The darkness could be without sound too, but silence is only implied. This lovely monoku’s deft use of sibilants implies that watchers may speak only in whispers, enhancing a calm sense of quietude.

monsoon supermoon
some moments together
at the bus stand

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India

The poem focuses on a time when there is a special celestial event underway – a perigee or supermoon, when a full moon is at its closest to Earth and appears much larger and brighter. In many tropical regions, distance from the coast determines patterns of daily downpours during rainy season. In some places, it rains non-stop for days or even weeks on end and the night sky rarely, if ever, is clear. In others, it may teem for several hours late in the day, then perhaps overcast skies will recede for a while in early evening. The poet captures one such lucky instant when a break occurs in the clouds, observed while sheltering from storms waiting for a bus. As well as the spectacle of a big bright supermoon, this fleeting glimpse is made even more special because the poet experiences its transient beauty with a companion who, maybe unexpectedly, has come to the same bus stop. This gentle haiku implies that a chance, perhaps almost stolen, short encounter is shared with a beloved or subject of deep affection.

low tide
the new moon reveals
starfish

Anica Marcelic
Zapresic, Croatia

The moon influences life on Earth in numerous ways. Some animals respond to moon cycles, their lives and movements governed by circalunar rhythms in a similar way to circadian biological processes. The moon’s pull helps govern tides, which in turn affect the behavior of seashore dwellers which need to stay buried in sand or, like clinging limpets, clamp tight in their shells as the tide ebbs. Some organisms use the moon’s light to navigate and reproduce. Spectacular mass coral spawning events on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef happen in response to the moon. When low tides fall even lower in some moon phases, starfish seem to appear everywhere.

In the late 19th century, haiku master Masaoka Shiki was instrumental in reviving haiku in the form of shasei, a “sketch from life.” This haiku may at first reading seem like a poetic snapshot from a child’s simple observation during an early evening rock pool excursion. Yet it resonated with me because in seven short words it captures some of the cyclical rhythms of life itself.

lying on our backs
searching the sky for sputniks
friends for life

Mike Stinson
Nebraska USA

Certain nostalgic poems can convey a sense of wistfulness, sadness of loss or regret. Not this haiku. I enjoyed its tone of delightful reminiscence. In Line 1 a scene is set where the poet takes us to what may be a grassy bank not far from home, somewhere dark sky viewing is possible away from city lights. Line 2 establishes timeframe – late 1950s – when the then Soviet Union was launching its first four space missions. Three of these spacecraft, called sputnik, Russian for “co-wayfarer,” reached Earth orbit. We imagine two youngsters excitedly scanning the sky for satellites. Did the young friends actually see a sputnik in orbit? Tiny Sputnik 1 was only beachball-sized but it orbited at a relatively low altitude, so maybe they did. It doesn’t matter one way or another, because while they watched and chatted away in anticipation of an amazing event, what they were forging together was a bond which would last into their futures, so they have become co-wayfarers themselves.

the Perseids again
her hospice bed is too far
from the small window

Urszula Marciniak
Poland

This haiku is set somewhere around mid-August, peak time for the best meteor shower of the Northern Hemisphere year, the Perseids. On warm summer nights, skywatchers are able to go outside to view bright shooting stars, some with long light trails. When the Earth completes its pass through Comet Swift-Tuttle’s cloud of space debris, the Perseid shower is done for another year. Perhaps the subject of this haiku was a keen viewer whose regular custom it was to wake before dawn to witness the annual spectacle with friends and family. This year her circumstances have changed. It is Perseids time once more, but now she is in palliative care and unable to rise from her bed. Even the window’s size precludes a decent view. Meteor showers are the essence of ephemerality and transience. This deeply moving haiku evokes a sense of the inevitability of time passing, of human fragility, and how the world begins to shrink away towards the end.

space shuttle
over the moon in ’81
my first born

Jan Stretch
Victoria, B.C. Canada

What a marvellous thing memory is! We remember where we were and what we were doing on the occasion of important world events. The year 1981 marked the maiden voyage of the aerospace craft known as the Space Shuttle, forerunner of future space missions to a space station permanently in orbit around the Earth. This joyful haiku summons that sense of wonder felt by many when the shuttle mission was a success, and then brings us, equally happily, down to earth. Line 2 ‘over the moon’ acts as a pivot line to vividly capture both an image of the spacecraft’s trajectory and the euphoria of a mother welcoming her newborn into the world, juxtaposing a major scientific achievement with a very intimate human experience. One thing is certain, that year is one that will never be forgotten!

Join us next week for our next prompt…

Guest editor Marietta McGregor is a retired Tasmanian botanist and journalist who has made her home between 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 natural sciences, and has worked as palynologist, garden designer, science journalist, editor, university tutor, education manager, and grants developer for the national wildlife collection. 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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Banner photo credit: Marietta McGregor

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.