3 Haikus || An Oblation of Things

Beneath the red eaves
a spider’s-web sail unfurls
leeward, boughs bending

Moss shimmers silver
old Sol sets in the branches’
autumn silhouette

I lie under leaves
the sanctuary above
earthen priest below

Haiku II

roam the twilit road
lined with juniper halos
ever-gold porchlight

Haiku I

the sun rises thrice
through the rhododendron tree
city of windows

The First Years

These are simply lines from the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy” that struck me as particularly beautiful, powerful and strongly poetic. I’ve arranged them in lines and have added and subtracted some punctuation to emphasize the language the way I read it.

 

Once, in those very early days

my brother brought into the nursery

the lid of a biscuit tin, which he had

covered with moss,

garnished with twigs

and flowers so as to make it

a toy garden or toy forest.

 

That was the first beauty I ever knew.

What the real garden had failed to do,

 

the toy garden did.

It made me aware of nature –

not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors,

but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant.

 

As long as I live,

my imagination

of Paradise will

retain something

of my brother’s

 

garden.