Education and Inspiration through the ancient art of storytelling!
In traditional Japanese haiku there was a parlor game in which each person would take turns creating a Haiku, borrowing an image or line, an idea from the person who just took their turn. In this tradition, here is a longer poem made up of linked verse, a series of haiku that tell a longer story about a canoe trip I took into the Canadian Wilderness:
the violent fires of sunset
reflected in the black calmness
of Lac Escarte
one star in the cup of quarter moon
breaks through the clouds
the loon’s voice
dances in the echo
of endless bays and coves
a bat squeeks
its flight
appearing and disappearing
an illusion
thirty minnows leap skyward
chased by predator
hiding in nothingness
as I paddle through this stillness
the crest of canoe
creates the only waves
the calmness engulfs me
the echo of loon enters me
turning inward
the canoe begins to drift
my fishing line goes limp
birch-spruce breeze fills my bosom
I drink the lake
a drop of it
flows through my streams
the dark shores blur
in their own reflection
