Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

This is my first earring haiku (which I think is Wiscon 2001). Shiny green beads named "So I told the duke":

So she told the duke
how the road runs south, and up,
as the clouds streamed by.

Posted here mostly so I'll have it somewhere other than my Palm, and so I can use the tags to find all of them.

elisem arranged to gather several people to socialize with her while she waited for her train to depart from New York this afternoon. As part of this, she brought along earrings for haiku, this time with a twist--she said we can mail her the haiku. The earrings I picked are green-and-purple beads, 3 on each earring. The title she gave me, after asking whether I wanted goofy or serious and being told "either", was was "It's Fun-Flavoured". I drew a blank on that, and asked for the other possibility, which was "Delayed Celebration."

In the end, I used the first title. I read a few Web pages about haiku recently, one of which noted that 17 syllables of English is significantly more words/information than in Japanese, and that some English-language poets are therefore experimenting with other forms, such as 3-5-3. Hence, two related haiku:

Cotton candy melts
away, leaving only the
memory of glee.

Next summer's
Cotton candy is
Always sweet.

---

I also got to hug porcinea, who was on her way to Rochester on a train leaving before Elise's, and talk to roadnotes, sinboy, tnh, cjsherwood (whom I had not previously met), and australian_joe (I hope I haven't forgotten anyone). TNH, Sinboy, Joe, and I wandered over to a nearby food court afterwards, so Joe and Josh could have lunch and we could all talk. (T and I had smoothies.) It was fun, worth the trip.

I decided it made more sense to come home for a couple of hours and then head back out than to wander around downtown all afternoon; thus, I picked up a couple of things at the drugstore, went up to Target and bought pillows, and then came back here, made tea, read my email, and wrote Elise a postcard with the haiku on it.

Not feeling very sensible, or very butterflyish, this morning; hence the "name" change.

Also, there is more to haiku than counting to 17 syllables.

This is from elisem's haiku earring party.

Comfortable vices

Sin was too difficult
for them, so they gossipped
and drank stolen tea.

The earrings in question have shiny brown beads.

The astute reader will note that the syllable pattern on this is 6-6-5; the 5-7-5 version isn't as good. You may insert a hyphen and line break before the c in "difficult" if it pleases you. The astute reader may also note that the word "gossipped" looks funny.

Eagle chicks await
on platforms in the hilltops.
First, a hot June day.

elisem asked people to post their contributions to her haiku/earring not-exactly-contest to her journal. I wound up with two sets of earrings. For the second set, Twilight's Beacons (each has one large hollow bone
bead, with star-shaped holes carved into it; two blue and one copper bead above, one blue below), I wasn't happy with my haiku. After thought and discussion, I wound up with this prose poem:

Twilight's Beacons

Emerging from the chaos and endless waiting of the terminal, we boarded a coach, over roads never seen before, but the birds are the same, the trees are the trees of home, and the sky on my planet is still blue, only a deep purple through the front window, above the same green world. Road names speak of other places--Harlem, Shattuck--as the twilight settles upon us.

Darkness ahead, of rain much beloved, but also feared. Lightning leaps for the clouds, leading us onward, and the sky on my world is a pale nameless not-quite-blue as the red setting sun shows me the place my people are calling home, for a little while.

Vicki Rosenzweig
Madison, 27 May 2001

Elise's haiku challenge was a poetry game: she put out pairs of earrings, and if you liked a pair, you could ask their name. From that, we created haiku: either with those words, or something close to them, as part of the poem, or something related to them. Enough structure to be interesting and useful, and nobody had to play.

The pair I'm wearing today are named "Twilight Beacon." Beads of blue glass and carved water-buffalo bone.

I'm still fiddling with the haiku, trying to get it right. Having a quiet half hour in the Green Room--the other two people there were sitting and writing--I also wrote a prose poem on the theme. With two words and a pair of earrings, an overly difficult trip to Wiscon became something else, a piece of the voyage home, and the color of the sky.

Elise and I handed a piece of paper back and forth, editing as we went, with occasional comments like "I know you love that word"; "no, I love the two around it" and "how about a comma here?" while Mike and Lise talked theatre at the same dinner table.

There are a lot of reasons I love Wiscon--this is a new one, or a new cluster of them.

Here's one version, pulled together this morning because I left all the papers at home:

Past alien fields

Home at last. Lightning flashes

a twilight beacon.

[The date and time above are Sunday evening of Wiscon.]