re:Virals 569

“More difficult than making your own verses interesting is understanding those of others…” ―Shinkei (1406 –1475). Citing this, Onitsura (1661 – 1738) wrote: “…this should be a way in which a person is completely given over to training.”

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. In the host chair today is Susan Yavaniski. This week’s poem, chosen by Alan Summers was:

   
past bedtime . . .
a lunar landing glows
through the keyhole
—Lorraine A Padden
 The Pan Haiku Review issue 4 (December 2024)

Introducing this poem, Alan writes:

‘Past bedtime’ magically captures childhoods of the past (and present). It conjures up a child’s strong imagination, wonder, and curiosity. The choice of enjambment as ‘glows through’ is split over two lines to create/allow separate ‘phrases’ in lines two and three yet running through is that third extra phrase: “a lunar landing glows through the keyhole.” So much depends on a keyhole glazed with light…

Host comment (Susan):

An aperture into a more innocent time, Padden’s verse unlocks a door to memories of childhood, as well as to that brief period in human history when a televised current event had the power to unite people the world over with a Spielbergian sense of wonderment.

Though written in present tense, poetic sleight-of-hand deftly summons the past in every line. “Once-upon-a-time” orbits around the opening fragment “past bedtime,” which teleports the reader to the child’s-eye view. “A lunar landing” recalls those very first years of lunar exploration, the thrill of which so impacted the collective imagination. “The keyhole” suggests a doughty old-fashioned architecture, a home built before the the space age replaced the millennia-old skeleton key and mortise lock with the prosaic thumbturn.

Altogether, the words cast a trickle of light sufficient to reveal the confines of a bedroom, a pajamaed child, a pockmarked moon looming in black and white on a TV screen, an astronaut bundled in a spacesuit half-floating across it. The whole tableau is magically conjured from the space between the lines, a chiaroscuro that vividly recalls that irrepressible excitement peculiar to childhood, with its sense of discovery and of transgression  mingled together with that twinge of fear that mom and dad might find us, doing something forbidden.

M.R. Pelletier:

The Space-Time of Haiku

The time of a poem is always a past even though the time of its reading is always a present. The time of a poem need not be specified or pinpointed or timestamped and dated. I place this poem in 1972. The year is a time within my own timeline — the time of the Apollo 17 mission.

The time “past bedtime” is the best time of the time we call childhood because this is the time when the child has time to herself. I once used that time to look through my bedroom window at the stars, wondering how & why there was all that something rather than just nothing at all.

The little girl of this poem (I imagine a 5- or 6-year-old) spends her time — the time of the poem — looking through the keyhole of her bedroom door. The door and its keyhole apparatus (no floating keyholes, right?) I imagine were hung inside the doorframe in 1932 when the house the girl lives in was built. When she looks through the keyhole, she is also always looking through a past or, at the very least, an artifact of a past that has its own past. (It is difficult to determine how many pasts there have been—more are created all the time.)

But the little girl does not know any of this. She thinks she is watching “a lunar landing” — which she is — and one that is happening at the time she is watching it — which it isn’t, for the transmission of the video signal she is watching (that “glow” on her parents’ 1972 black-and-white TV) takes 1.3 seconds to travel from the Moon to the Earth.

The starlight I saw during any of the stargazing ‘presents’ of my childhood may have been emitted by stars that, at the time I saw their light, no longer existed (all that light the light from a multitude of pasts traveling toward a multitude of presents and beyond). The missing subject of the poem may not be a little girl, but her absence leaves a glow. The unspecified lunar landing may not be the Apollo 17 landing I assign to it, but the absence of its time and place also leaves a glow. The poet remembers a glow which the language of the poem only partially re-members. Through the glow that is the poem, the reader puts flesh upon absent subjects and sets them into motion to perform the absent actions of the poem. From one poem an infinity of readings —and relative times and relative spaces — but not a single one entangled (and each one with its own glow like the light from a distant star).

Urszula Marciniak:

I once dreamed of Saturn’s rings. I don’t remember if they looked like those in textbooks or what they look like in reality.

They made an impression on me, and I remember the dream many years later.

My first thought after reading the haiku was the inability to decipher the details of dream impressions upon waking. But maybe it’s about freedom?

In dreams, we are free, unbound by body, space, and even time. While the alarm clock is ringing, we can have a long sleep that justifies the alarm. The brain likes clear situations. There is an effect; you have to find the cause.

Who knows, maybe life in dreams is more real and full than waking life. We make decisions there, too, and not everything goes according to plan. A world on the other side of the keyhole, accessible only in dreams.

What if we could find the key that connects these two worlds? It exists, we just don’t like to think or talk about it.

Radhamani Sarma:

A very insightful haiku, it could be a story for children, or adult science fiction, or a slice from life. “Past bedtime” could be a state of sleeplessness, or simply the leisure hours to view the sky and moon.  There is silence everywhere, lights are glowing, I envision a relaxed time after bedtime during which a man spends with kids or his wife, improvising a story on a lunar landing. The second and third lines, “a lunar landing glows/ through the keyhole” might refer to either a manned mission, or to unmanned one. The vast night show is being viewed through the key hole and so it is all brighter.

Some quotes about the moon from my Yahoo search:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” – Les Brown.
“The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.” – Arthur C. Clarke.

Dan Campbell:

Memories of Looking through a Keyhole

I don’t remember what time my parents put me to bed that night. It’s strange how the years can keep some things while losing others without saying anything.

I remember the hallway.

I remember the darkness in my bedroom and the thin line of light under the door. I was told that since I was too young I should go to bed; bedtime was bedtime even though the whole world seemed to be holding its breath. Adults had their rules in these situations while children had keyholes.

So I got out of bed. Put my eye to the keyhole.

Past bedtime…
a landing glows
through the keyhole

Now I remember it like this not as history but as light.

I could see part of the television glowing through that opening. The images were ghostly and not clear. I never managed to explain what I was seeing or to understand the science, the politics. All I knew was that something impossible was happening very far away and in some way its weak light had found its way into our house.

I was watching even though I wasn’t supposed to.

Maybe that is why the memory stayed.

I have forgotten ordinary evenings—the dinners eaten, the shows watched, the doors opened and closed.. I do remember that keyhole.

We think that the important moments in our lives will come with the sound of trumpets. In fact they usually don’t; instead they come to us in a way—through a voice from another room, through the light under a door or through a face disappearing around the corner. It is many years later that we realize what we have seen.

That night belonged to millions of people.

For me, the whole big event was inside a keyhole.

Now after all this time I sometimes wonder if memory is like that—that is, a small opening, in a closed door through which something far away still shines.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

For the protagonist of this haiku, it is long past her bedtime, sleep eludes her as she watches the spot of light through the keyhole. She is perhaps at a hospice, or even at home alone, and the keyhole opens up to her fevered imagination a whole world of beauty and grandeur. Unreal, remote, fantastic so totally away from this earth.

She could be seeing a satellite landing, a man in space gear descending on the moon for exploration of worlds anew. In a small moment, in a small speck of moon she might see eventful happenings. In small moments great things happen, transformations take place and great art is born. In some such moment Mozart discovered beauty in music, Constable in a haystack, Einstein in an equation and the Bard found his words.

Who knows what thoughts are harboured in her mind? In the profoundest moments of our vulnerability, when life becomes passive continuance we give vent to our imagination, fully inhabit the moment, and enter unknown vistas.

In the isolation of her room, in the solitude of her mind she traversed the universe, much like the time traveler Stephen Hawking, who was confined to a wheelchair and once commented: “My life traveling across the universe in my mind.”

Jennifer Gurney—through the innocent eyes:

There is a shimmering magic to Padden’s haiku. We are invited into this poem with a childlike wonder, given the clues of past bedtime and through a keyhole. And the main event is one related to space, which is full of awe.

It reminds me of the many space events we watched during my childhood. Watching the first footsteps on the moon on our family’s black and white TV. The names Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming household words, spoken with reverence and admiration. Every single space-related event anticipated, relished and enjoyed. Tang and Space Sticks were the rage. We shared a single toy space helmet among the neighborhood while re-enacting the show Lost in Space in the field behind our house. And you can imagine the energy in the room when a real-life astronaut came to our elementary school in his space suit for an all-school assembly. The only question on all of our minds: how do you go to the bathroom in a rocket ship? One brave soul asked it out loud. Actual moon rocks traveled the country and we could hold a piece of the moon in our hands for one transformative moment.

Years later, I worked at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and was part of many space-related events for the public. Lunar and solar eclipses, meteor showers and space take offs and landings. The opening of a whole new space wing to learn about our vast universe. As much as the excitement continued for those who sought out these events and exhibitions, the world as a whole has lost its intrigue with the mystery of space. That saddens me, for there is still so very much to be learned and enjoyed by leaving the confines of our home planet.

Ray Bradbury captures it well for me, ¨The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.¨ I feel that energy of aliveness, of curiosity, of a joy that vibrates to the core with Padden´s poem. Staying up late to watch and wonder. Tasting the magic of our wild and wonderful universe. Through the innocent eyes of childhood. Makes me smile and remember.

Author Lorraine Padden:

Whether it’s a keyhole or telescope, the small act of peering through an aperture into the depths of the unknown is endlessly fascinating. In this piece I wanted to play with comfort, curiosity and quite literally, the stuff dreams are made of. This moment was inspired by one in my own time when I first had the thrilling opportunity to extend my tiny visual reach into realms and realities that were beyond my understanding.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Jennifer Gurney has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, to a maximum of 500 words (succinctness will be valued);  academic, your personal response, spontaneous, or idiosyncratic. As long as it focuses on the verse presented, and with respect for the poet, all genuine reader reaction, criticism, and pertinent discussion is of value.   Out-takes are kept 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. Please note that commentaries must be your own personal work.

Poem for commentary:

     
rocking rowboat
the slow pulse
of jellyfish
— Anne Fox
  Haiku Girl Summer, 11 July, 2026

Footnote:

Lorraine A Padden is an award-winning poet, former professional dancer and Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry is featured worldwide by haiku societies, popular journals, and international competitions. Lorraine received a 2022 Touchstone Award for Individual Poems by the Haiku Foundation, and her debut collection Upwelling was named a short-list finalist for the Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Lorraine was a featured presenter at Upaya Zen Center’s popular Way of Haiku conference, and in 2024 served as a Fellow for the inaugural season of confluence haiku, a journal and pro-social platform focused on inclusion, community building, and experimentation in haiku and its many related forms. Last year, Lorraine published Last Straw, a haiku and photography collaboration with visual artist Daniel Derdula.  You can read a transcript of her interview with Jacob Salzer here: Haiku Poet Interviews

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