re:Virals 474
Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. This week’s poem, chosen by Dan Campbell, was:
when the dairy delivered the milky way —Laurie Greer The Heron’s Nest, Volume XXVI, Number 3: September 2024
Introducing this poem, Dan writes:
I am a big fan of Laurie and her poetry. Her poem reminded me of my boyhood days when I would spend summers on my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm and each day would start out with a walk at dawn under a star-filled sky to the dairy barn. I sure enjoyed looking up at the stars while walking to the barn.
Opening comment:
On first skim the question is whether there’s any cream beyond a play on ‘dairy’ and ‘milky way,’ and the answer is yes. First the structure that sweetly presents two different readings, with and without the cut. Then the use of the past tense to signal a finite recollection (with a tinge of nostalgia), associated and contrasted with our infinitely present galaxy (with a tinge of awe). The spare words used create a clear visual picture rich in accumulated connotations to nourish a reader’s mind.
Those with a rural childhood will probably think of the pre-dawn milking of cows in the farm dairy. Children of the suburbs, such as I, of the familiar pint bottles with different coloured foil tops that indicated clearly to the blue tits, if the bottles were left too long after first light, which ones contained full cream. I associate the Milky Way more with putting out the empties for the milkman to collect.
And now we buy skim milk in two-litre plastic flagons from the convenience store while at night the stars are fogged out by city lights. It’s cheaper, but far more prosaic.
Pamela Garry:
I love Laurie’s monoku. It right away delivers a cozy memory of my childhood home, the carport, the weekly deliveries of milk in glass jars, the collection of our empty milk jars. That mostly silent exchange by the reliable milkman, who occasionally applauded my hula hooping. The normalcy and intimacy of reuse.
That old milky way was heavy on fuel consumption, but what isn’t in today’s reign of supermarkets and Amazon deliveries and ‘modern conveniences’!
The one-line poem leaves me pondering the lowercase milky way versus the cosmic Milky Way. Maybe someday the dairy will be delivered in Mars by a reconstituted Perseverance.
Melissa Dennison:
The humour here is lovely.
The milky way, our celestial home, or neck of the woods on a spiral arm of the galaxy was imagined as a pool of cow’s milk by the ancient Egyptians. The Romans called it the Via Lactea I think. What great imaginations they had.
The first thing that springs to mind when reading Laurie’s words are that she is being playful, imagining our spiral arm delivered on the back of a milk truck one morning. Maybe one of the crates is knocked over and the heavens pour out. Now that is a novel creation myth.
However, to digress, Milky Ways are also a type of chocolate bar, which I loved as a child. Mmm such light, fluffy centres with a gorgeous purple blue wrapper covered in stars. So pretty. I like to imagine our local dairy delivering a chocolate bar with the morning milk to every house.
There are probably many myths and legends associated with the milky way and with milk itself. I suppose because milk is such an essential aspect of life, produced by mothers for their offspring. These stories also say much about our culture, history and origins. And we should remember that not everyone is lactose tolerant. That is another story.
Lastly, milk and whey, both key in the production of cheese, also made at the dairy. Perhaps the delivery truck also brought Laurie a block of cheese?
Alan Harvey:
What a beautifully lyrical haiku Laurie Greer has created, especially when I fill some of the narrative holes with images from my childhood. My uncle was a milkman in the 60s who would get up early in the still darkness of predawn morning to deliver milk. Imagine a mother, up early to feed her family. Going out to the porch and looking up at the Milky Way. Starting the morning with the potential of the universe overhead, her children’s future potential ahead of them. Hopefulness is a great way to begin the day.
Possibly I embellish too much. But we have the alliteration of dairy delivered and the pairing of dairy and milk to tie the haiku up in a cosmic knot. This is an elegant phrase – when the dairy delivered the milky way. Well done Laurie Greer for your lyricism in haiku.
Lakshman Bulusu:
This monoku literally means the delivery of milk-like stars to people on earth – a vision granted to be enjoying a life of star-like persistence on earth., especially at night. Metaphorically it might mean transforming one’s life into a life of joy, bubbling with happiness.
smiling faces
seeing milk-galaxy –
richnessdairy –
richness in life
through milkHowever the faint-starred the Milky Way might be composed of, the congregation of stars as in Milky Way is a sign of positivity and glamour.
This monoku stress on the words ‘dairy’ and ‘milky’’ , two coherent entities each juxtaposed with the other, signifying light and joy in morning thru night.
The richness of this monoku lies in reach via delivery of ‘milk’ rather the distance of the Milky Way., one on the earth and another looking from the earth – and gaining richness.The strength is felt when the haikuist repeats the milkyness using two words, ‘dairy’ and ‘milky way’ – both stressing permanence of the dairy and Milky Way.
Linda A. Powers—mundane associations can produce sublime sensations:
The first delight of this monoku is the connection between a dairy, which used to deliver bottles of milk, and a candy bar named Milky Way. Then the pun expands the reader’s frame of reference, and our home galaxy, the Milky Way, comes swirling into view. Nougat, caramel, and chocolate whirl like stars, dust, and light. The poem’s profound observation is that often mundane associations can produce sublime sensations. Just as a drop of water might induce thoughts of an ocean, the name of a candy bar might conjure reflections about a galaxy. This association plays with how elemental milk is to our birth and sustenance. The poet’s use of the concept of delivery evokes both our beginnings as infants and our oh so small place in the Milky Way.
Author Laurie Greer:
Many thanks to Dan for selecting my poem.
I just kind of stumbled into this poem (as I do with successful monoku; I can’t try to write them–they come out right the first time or they never do). I was thinking about my grandfather’s dairy farm and how when I was a child I saw there things that didn’t exist in my usual suburban neighborhood, like cows, bats, and stars. I got a flash of how earlier generations could bring in milk fresh from the dairy and, especially in winter, perhaps get a taste of early morning stars, too, as if the same source had left both milk and milky way at their doorstep. The link between “milky way” and “dairy” was irresistible–but then I worried that they were too close, and that I should push a little harder. Pushing resulted in nothing, so I left it, hoping editors would signal if it was a successful poem or not. Looking forward to what readers think!
Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Linda has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be as long or short, academic or spontaneous, serious or silly, public or personal as you like. All with respect for the poet. Out-takes from the best of these take their place in the THF Archives. Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.
Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems!
Poem for commentary:
filled with sky the voice of a child lost in play –Cora Whitmore Acorn: a Journal of Contemporary Haiku Issue 47, Fall 2021
The Haiku Foundation reminds you that participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior from all parties. Please see our Code of Conduct policy.
Footnote:
Laurie Greer is an independent bookseller in Washington, DC. She started working on haiku in 2018 as a distraction from giving up running, and this short, direct form soon expanded from something to do while walking to a somewhat obsessive ongoing activity.
A few of her verses may be viewed here in THF’s Haiku Registry. One of Laurie’s poems received a Touchstone Award last year.
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Comments (6)
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A big haiku. And what a wonderful exchange!
Just to add that the Milky Way is officially a kigo for early autumn (in Higginson’s saijiki) although from the Northern Hemisphere it can be seen, subject to light pollution, in all seasons except December to February (too close to the sun, they say), while in Australia a search reveals it to be most visible between late February and early October.
This is the stuff of pedantry.
Keith, when I was a kid in Seaford (Victoria, Aust) just across the road from the bay, the Milky Way was visible (when there were no clouds) When I was an older kid in an East Gippsland timber town the Milky way was visible ( except for when there was or had recently been a bushfire, in which case smoke cancelled out the stars and the full moon rising was magnified and red.)
Now, in an inner city suburb with electric lights everywhere, I don’t see the Milky Way at all. We, like cities around the world, have a bad light pollution problem.
There is, each year in the city of Melbourne, a Chinese Moon Festival, with dragons and lanterns and the lot:
“Celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival) in Melbourne by hitting up cultural performances, noshing on mooncakes, and gathering together a big group mates for a yum cha feed. The Mid-Autumn Festival — one of the most-celebrated dates in the Chinese calendar — is coming up soon, on Tuesday, September 17. (posted 13 Sept 2024 ) ”
That means we have, each year, a Chinese Harvest Moon Festival Celebration in the first month of Spring.
Checked this just now:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-08-16/milky-way-winner-night-sky-poll-science-week/104224630
(it’s the reliable ABC)
This may be of interest, too: https://wonderdome.co.uk/northern-vs-southern-hemisphere-sky/
Light pollution is an issue.
when the dairy delivered the milky way
—Laurie Greer
The Heron’s Nest, Volume XXVI, Number 3: September 2024
—
I’m late to reading this excellent haiku but wow, how it takes me back. . . to the first horse I got close to and patted. I think I was 5, going on 6 years old, in the beach-side outer suburb of Seaford. (Victoria, Australia)
As in many good one-liners, on first reading this haiku may seem simply absurd or a bad pun. But that’s a misreading. One then notices / realizes the (unmarked) cut after ‘delivered’. Back then, when our glass bottles of milk were delivered to the doorstep by the dairy man in the early morning twilight, the dairy did indeed deliver, literally.
And in the twilight of a clear early morning, with the foreshore on one side of the road and houses no taller than one or two stories on the other, the Milky Way stands out clearly. (The stars of the Milky Way, to our indigenous people, are the ancestors’ campfires and the winding black sky in between is the river.)
The big milk horse was well-trained. Clip-clop, clip-clop, this beautiful draft horse moved along to the next stop and waited, as it had been trained to do, while the milkman brought the bottles to one doorstep and came back and ran along for the next.
Once I’d understood how it worked (by secretly looking out of my 2nd floor bedroom window), I sneaked out of the house and waited at the next stop from ours. So I was waiting in the shadows when the milkman came for his next collection of bottles, and I asked him if I could pat the horse. He got a fright, but then laughed and said yes, so I got to pat the neck of this lovely horse (briefly. as the milkman had his job to do) No-one else was awake or up.
—
Yes, the dairies delivered bottles of milk by horse and cart in the dark before dawn in the outer suburbs in the early 1950’s. The milk horse’s hoofs rang out softly under the Milky Way.
—
Nicely done and “thanks for the memories”, Laurie.
(Later, I lived in a small country town, in the pub, and we had the one cow to provide milk. There were several dairy farms in that town. No deliveries that I know of from there, except to far-off places. If you wanted milk, you went to a dairy farm with your can or raised your own cow. )
Lovely.
I too remember the occasional horse-and-cart down our street in the early fifties, but it was the rag-and-bone man. My grandad used to nip out with a shovel and a bucket to get the horse manure for his chrysanths. By then, the milk float was electric. And it also brought Welfare orange juice, a heavy syrup so we children could get vitamin C in the postwar rationing.
I wouldn’t want to go back to those days, though they were full of wonder for a big-eyed child.
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/threads/orange-juice-from-the-welfare-in-the-1950s.10267/
“My grandad used to nip out with a shovel and a bucket to get the horse manure for his chrysanths.” – Keith
Nothing wasted, then. :-) Horse manure is good, and the best edible mushrooms grow in sheep paddocks.
At my Grandma Smith’s place in Chelsea (Victoria, Australia) there was the Rabbit-O and his horse and cart and, more mysteriously, the Night Horse, who had to walk up cobbled lanes pulling the dunny cart and wait while the dunny man collected and emptied the dunny cans.
We, in Seaford, were very modern because we had a septic tank and flushing toilet. (This was after WW2 & the government had given returned sailors and soldiers plots of land to build homes on. )