HAIKU DIALOGUE – Paradigm Shift – the artifacts of wind

Paradigm Shift with Guest Editor Craig Kittner

“Learn about pines from the pine,” Bashō advised.

Why do you think he said that?

Animism is a birthright of haiku.

However, western culture, despite all its scientific knowledge, tends to put human experience on some rarefied plane, separate and above all the other beings and forces of the universe. An ego-laden, anthropocentric attitude that would write off learning from the pine as anthropomorphism and personification.

How does this impact your writing?

Can you shift your perspective away from the human and dress yourself in the consciousness of another form?

next week’s theme: the silence of satellites

Although it may be quiet, not a single moment on earth can be truly silent. You need the vacuum of space for that.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday July 17, 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Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry.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 Craig’s commentary for the artifacts of wind:

balanced rock
another grain removed
from its slim pedestal

Kathleen Vasek Trocmet
Texas, USA

The rocky artifacts of wind seem so solid to human eyes. Yet the force that sculpted them continues to wear them away. Even the hardest of earthy substances are temporary. This is very haiku!

hurricane season…
the steady breeze that tells us
a storm is coming

Ed Bremson
Raleigh, NC

Some artifacts are ephemeral. For example, the trepidation that lives in those who have experienced the full extent of the wind’s fury. Natural wisdom requires respect for nature’s ability to destroy.

memorial fountain
wind dashes the orderly
flow of grief

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

Consider how often we speak of wind as if it has emotion and intent. I just did it above in referring to the wind’s fury. Despite all our scientific advances, we are still helpless in the face of certain forces, and we find that hard to accept. So we scramble to find words that dispel our discomfort. Grief, like wind, does not bow to our will.

twilight breeze
across the pond
wrinkles the moon

Ron Degler
Los Angeles, California

The moon should serve as a constant reminder of the rare gifts of our planet. That lifeless rock, so close to us but so different. Yet in the mind of the poet, the wind can touch even the moon and create a lasting impression. An artifact worthy of dreams.

winter moor—
a solitary hawthorn
bonsaied by the wind

Claire Ninham
North Yorkshire, UK

I love the use of bonsai as a verb here. A quirky turn of thought that gives this haiku such originality. There’s an irony here too. As a way of art, bonsai mimics what the wind does to trees. Yet the poet turns that on its head, to say the wind is doing what we do.

charred foothills
the unchecked fury
of sundowners

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

Back to the wind’s fury. Paired with fire, is there any better reminder that we are not separate from nature? Another reminder, in this world of dynamic forces, that all is temporary and all vulnerable.

overlook—
the breath of earth
upon my mouth

Victor Ortiz
Bellingham, WA

Well might we say that the wind is the earth’s breath. If it weren’t for wind, life, in all its glorious complexity, would not have spread across the planet. Without that biological complexity, we would never have evolved. Perhaps you’ll forgive the conceit, but one could say that people are the ultimate artifacts of the wind.

& here are the rest of the selections:

spring zephyr …
caressing the wounds
of a barren tree

बसंत की पुरवाई …
एक बंजर पेड़ के
जख्मों को सहलाती

Teji Sethi
India

 

bent but not broken meadow grass

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

sand dune —
the wind becomes
topographic

Christopher Peys
Los Angeles, CA

 

windy night-
mumma’s duppata blows
towards the stars

Muskaan Ahuja
Chandigarh, India

 

untangling the songs
knotted up in my hair…
the wind’s many gifts

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

 

all I’ve stood for
stone arches
slowly eroding

Terri L. French
Full time Rver

 

desert wraiths
conjured by the wind
shapeshifting

Lyntha Nelson
Colorado, USA

 

trade winds–
the scent of
cinnamon lingers

Lafcadio Orlovsky
USA

 

may fifth
koi carp kites
gulping down wind

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

winding
ladder to heaven–
a tornado

Teiichi Suzuki
Japan

 

spinning backwards
into childhood
paper pinwheel

Ravi Kiran
India

 

hot morning…
his voice
in the wind

Rosa Maria Di Salvatore
Catania (Italy)

 

river wind…
heat carries the buzz
of unknown lives

Alan Summers
England

 

sand-laden wind
caressing the rock formation
the moonrise

Corine Timmer
Faro, Portugal

 

summer sky
reshaped
a small cloud

Slobodan Pupovac
Zagreb, Croatia

 

a rush of empty wind
the lowest bar
goes lower

John S Green
Bellingham, WA

 

desert varnish…
how the wind captured
culture in time

Richard Matta
San Diego, California

 

tornado warnings …
a silent prayer

Ba Duong
Florida, USA

 

I sit by her grave
among leaves-
how she loved the wind

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

tree branches
scratch the passing wind
leaving sighs

Carl Maier
Las Cruces, New Mexico

 

twig-by-twig
new home
flies away

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA, USA

 

same nightmare
filmy curtains heavy
with a hanging moon

Anitha Varma
India

 

wind bent tree
kissing mother earth
strong root ties

Hla Yin Mon
Yangon, Myanmar

 

old clothes
brushed by the wind –
new scarecrow

Nicole Pottier
France

 

pine tree…
the sound and scent
of wind in me

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

 

westerlies …
the silent snow
loses its calm

Meera Rehm
UK

 

howling wind…
the weight of grief
in flattened crop

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

star dunes
the shifting shape
of windblown sand

Helen Ogden
Pacific Grove, CA

 

hot desert wind
suckles top soil
weeds grow tap roots

Christa Pandey
Austin, TX, USA

 

his whistle . . .
a fallen rose
stirs in the puddle

Kavitha Sreeraj
Hyderabad, India

 

winds wester
the one cloud 千代 captured
on a polaroid

simonj
UK

 

storm leaves
no words for
inside out umbrella

Kathleen Mazurowski
Chicago, IL

 

swirling wind
the weightlessness
of the eagle

Louise Hopewell
Australia

 

littering
and sweeping by turns
the wind picks up

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Québec

 

spindrift
the upturned dinghy
in a shroud

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

 

another shape
of this foreign land
winter gust

Agus Maulana Sunjaya
Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia

 

gusts of wind
an old man straightens
the scarecrow’s head

Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

 

Lockdown winds
withered leaves
uncrushed on pavement

Prit Khullar
India

 

east wind
the pines bow
to nothing

Zahra Mughis
Lahore, Pakistan

 

horizontal –
the hawthorn tree
after a hooley

Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom

 

on the playground
an empty juice box
battered by the wind

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY

 

weathercock
getting my direction
each day

Mona Iordan
Bucharest, Romania

 

westerlies
dethrone blooming rose
and fly it to earth

Padmini Krishnan
Singapore

 

shapes the wind
the impervious mountain –
my disheveled spring

modella il vento
l’impervia montagna –
mia scapigliata primavera

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna ( Italia)

 

where the wind begins
sorting maple leaves from words
comes between us

Ron Scully
Manchester, NH

 

stirring up water
the wind
finds new shades

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

an egret’s plume
the airs and graces
of wind

Debbie Strange
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

 

behind the bay breeze what it leaves

Pippa Phillips
United States

 

wind weathered stone
the delicate arch
of my mother’s life

Kath Abela Wilson
United States

 

aftermath . . .
path of a cyclone
strewn with silence

Barrie Levine
Wenham MA USA

 

Pacific cypress
contorted branches
mimic the wind

Gary Evans
Stanwood, Washington

 

weathered by
wind and sand …
the mountaineer

Karen Harvey
North Wales

 

daybreak
Chinook winds fill
a boxcar

P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada

 

spring breeze
corn leaves tickle the armpit
of a scarecrow

Adjei Agyei-Baah
Ghana/New Zealand

 

bumming a ride
a fresh petal
on the wind’s back

Sandra St-Laurent
Yukon, Canada

 

summer solace
the whoosh of sudden wind
in tall grass

Susan Rogers
Los Angeles CA

Craig Kittner has lived a lot of places. Fourteen at last count. He was reared, for a while, in Illinois. Then North Carolina. Providence saw the start of some interesting things that DC helped solidify. Now he lives kind of near the sea and is compelled to ramble and write.

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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