Wednesday, November 08, 2006

A tale of two cities

After returning to Dunedin, New Zealand, my home city, it was inevitable that I would write haiku there also, and that I would then compare what I had written in the two environments.

Rice by the spoon was the result.

I selected 100 haiku written in NZ and a further 100 (not yet included in Eight seasons in Otaru) and alternated them, with an eye on linear progression.

I believe that no haiku actually stands alone. There is always a context - either the haiku that stand on the same page and in the same book, or in the reader's mind i.e. the haiku he or she had previously read.

Here are a couple of six-linked-haiku: two leaves out of my book:

jump
the dead rat
mid! jump

leaping up at me
tonight
just traffic plashing

soaring hawk
behind me honks
a taxi

the crow croaks
a new day of sunshine
slumbers

I might have known
while napping the
silverbeet wilted

blue and green
a sandwich
orange peel

***

duck the willow
wind stirs twice
the rain

nightfoot padding past
the stairwell inlit moon
the silence roars

no footprint
just earthworms naked
over snow

buddha in a
plastic mac and bonnet
sleeping ice

from time to time
I wipe my nose
it's only rain

March melts
but the mud
remains for rain

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