Haiku #252

In the parking lot--
snow in a neat mound on the
bumper of our truck

Haiku #251

Snow falls so
ice hits my face and melts
I am not alone

Potpourri

1. Have finished a great semester teaching courses that I love: fiction workshop, Modern Poetry, Native American Lit, Creative Writing Thesis class.

2. Subscribed to a new magazine of poetry: Rattle. I highly recommend it. Reasonable price, no ads, page after page of great poems.

3. Wrote a few poems myself.

4. Been reading a book about koans. Enlightening!

5. Been thinking a lot about my trip out West this summer. I want to go back.

6. Been thinking about my friend, Dawn, who just had surgery. Get well, Dawn.

7. Been thinking about friends and students, old and new.

8. Made Allen a very good stew!

9. Been enjoying the snowfall. We went out yesterday to eat and to get groceries. We picked up some five dollar movies and watched one of them in the wee hours of the morning, a movie based on a Fante novel: Ask the Dust.

10. Been sleeping late: always a treat. Drinking coffee with a spot of brandy. It's all good.

When You Least Expect It

Sometimes writing happens when you least expect it. I took a long bath tonight and reread The Essential Haiku (ed. Robert Hass). My reading gave me the idea to try something. (I seem to always get my best ideas in the bathtub).

When I got out of the tub, I grabbed my little journal and wrote a brand new poem based loosely on the Renga form. Then I rewrote an impromptu poem I'd done when I was in California recently, again loosely adopting the Renga form. I was very happy with the results!

Goodbye, Lolita

Photo taken in late summer. She'd followed me out to the Airstream.

Lolita, a.k.a. Teater-t0ts, a.k.a. Six-Teaters, died today, apparently peacefully in her sleep. We found her atop a sleeping bag in the shop, still soft and still warm. She came to us as a kitten, a stray, so small she slept in my husband's shoe. She's buried in the field, where she loved to walk with us in the evenings.

Haiku #250

Water pot sizzles
at five in the morning
atop the woodstove

Haiku #249

Here in Ohio
coyote sings in the light
from my small window

Haiku #248

A bright patch of sky
comes this way across the field
Look! the trees are white!

Haiku #247

morning of first snow
pecking cat food in blue bowl
two clear-eyed sparrows