HAIKU DIALOGUE – Paradigm Shift – the intelligence of trees

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 artifacts of wind

As events shape and sometimes twist personalities, all things exposed to the wind are altered by its touch.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday July 10, 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Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry.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 intelligence of trees:

Perhaps as a child you were taught, as I was, that trees have brown trunks and green leaves and that this is the way they should be drawn. So that became your mental image for trees, and you stopped seeing them, truly.

And it took poetry to reopen your eyes.

arboretum
a tree becomes
The Shagbark Hickory

Tom Bierovic
DeLand, Florida

What was the tree before? The name is irrelevant to the tree’s existence, but how does naming it sway us? Does it add or subtract from our experience of the tree?

pine bonsai
the negotiation
of shape

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA

Ah, shape! We humans are so enamored with shape – with form – are we not? When we lay our hands on a tree, we become one more force impacting its growth. We can work in opposition to its nature or in collaboration with it.

the love words
of a birch and a fir…
light breeze

Rosa Maria Di Salvatore
Catania (Italy)

Can trees love? Well, how do you define it? I see love as a universal force that moves a being to perform acts of nurturance. So yes, I believe trees can love. Science is still discovering new ways in which they nurture.

watching this tree
since my childhood
practicing kintsugi

Ram Chandran 
India

Kintsugi: an act of repair that highlights the flaws and makes them beautiful. The flaws – the knots, and splits, and hollows of a tree. Run your hands over them, are they not lovely? And aren’t your scars the same?

forgiveness…
the charred gum
sprouts again

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

If trees can love, can they not also forgive? Again, what definition will we bring to bear? Forgiveness can be seen as moving past a harm that’s been done to a being and flourishing in the process. Could be that trees are experts at forgiving.

a longing
strays skyward
tree canopy

Richa Sharma
India

Standing in the midst of a forest, you can feel the trees’ yearning for the sun, can’t you? And do you not have a similar desire: to be nurtured and to grow? To fully express your being in the sunlight?

sculpture garden
every tree
a work in progress

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

So we return to form and what we share with trees.

The drive to be and to make something concrete out of our being – expressed simply by a tree, perhaps, but perhaps with more complexity than we humans yet realize.

The drive to grow, surely, and humanity has so much more growth ahead of it. At least, I hope it does.

& here are the rest of the selections:

wind bent tree
in its shadow
a flock of crows

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

nectar rewards
for their mercenary ants
acacia trees

John Hawkhead
UK

an oak sun-shaped
by forest canopy—
the plunge pool

Richard Matta
San Diego, CA

 

this year too . . .
the old tree with a few
budding leaves

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

carrying
a lifetime in its womb
an old banyan

Teji Sethi
India

 

hectic traffic…
roadside trees
stand still

Jagajit Salam
Imphal, India

 

morning sun
on an old tree stump
a new shoot

Jeff Leong
Malaysia

 

hemlock sprouts
reaching out
spruceless space

Pam Joy
Dyea, Alaska

 

apricot harvest
the branches return
to the sky

Nazarena Rampini
Italia

 

a deer —
underground, trees
pass it on

Alan Peat
Biddulph, United Kingdom

 

green distances –
in deep soil
tree roots meet

Neera Kashyap
India

 

silence before the storm
in the shade of great oak
tiny birches

Wiesław Karliński
Namysłów, Poland

 

on the cherry tree
a single leaf moves
the caterpillar sleeps

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

 

raging wind…
the weeping willow
bows its own way

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

 

dead wood –
still oak feeds
its forest

Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom

 

ground zero
my walnut seedling
showing leaves

simonj
UK

 

a fruit
for the stone thrower
the speaking tree

Ravi Kiran
Hyderabad, India

 

pest control
the forest-wide net
of trees

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

red squirrel alarm
what I learn
about the pine

Sarah Metzler
United States

 

drought year
the red buds
self prune

Susan Farmer
United States

 

whispering
the language between
leaves and wind

Xiaoou Chen
Kunming, China

 

age-old relationships
the ways a forest
flourishes

Pat Davis
Pembroke, NH USA

 

receding ice
an empty oak
rearranges itself

Meera Rehm
UK

 

lumberjack
fragrances for danger
between the trees

Tsanka Shishkova
Bulgaria

 

maple tree
memories
of summer rain

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

winter storm
the snow-laden plum tree
leans into itself

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA

 

aspen hillside
we are many we are one
we are sunlight

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

shedding leaves…
all the sunshine
that I give away

ਝੜਦੇ ਪੱਤੇ
ਉਹ ਸਾਰੀ ਧੁੱਪ
ਜੋ ਮੈਂ ਵੰਡਦਾ ਹਾਂ

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

easy reach
for the royal palm
midnight moon

Barrie Levine
Wenham MA USA

 

parijat tree –
leaning over the fence
where flowers fall

Sushama Kapur
Pune, India

 

heavy ascension –
the shadow of leaves
is casting light

Nicole Pottier
France

 

toward the sun
a crooked limb of dogwood
winds its way

Agus Maulana Sunjaya
Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia

 

dry riverbank …
the moan of trees
from afar

Priti Aisola
Hyderabad, India

 

fire season
the yellow pines thicken
their bark

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

in the shade of the beech-
folds to the side
a rosebush

all’ombra del faggio-
si piega di lato
un cespuglio di rose

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna ( Italia )

 

sisters
sharing roots and sky
two old hickories

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Huntsville, Alabama

 

a tree
repeats itself . . .
empty sky

Vijay Prasad
Patna, India

 

extended family
the hickory hangs onto
its last leaf

Lorraine Padden
San Diego, CA

 

reborn
from a yew branch
new moon

Pippa Phillips
United States

 

body shaped
by what’s in its way
bent sapling

Kath Abela Wilson
United States

 

children wander
on the forest floor
shimmering sunlight

John Green
Bellingham, WA

 

sabbatical
the spiraling armor
of pinecones

C.R. Harper
USA

 

old stump in the woods
kept alive by the sweet roots
of its family

Greer Woodward
Waimea, HI

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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