Konnichi Wa Haiku Series, Part 6

Hagiwara

The hills and valleys of the Japanese Alps, in Gifu Prefecture

Hagiwara

Sun worn pines weave by

trains bound for Kanazawa.

Your last word a bark.

 

Hagiwara

I’ll be the first to admit my default emotion is melancholy. Such a burden as becoming is no stone to shoulder absent-mindedly. We are molding our backs with what we choose to see. Some invent rocks and myth. Others are born miners, woodsmen, sailors.

I rode a train to Takayama through the rolling hills of pine and cedar and who knows what else. I have no idea what tree is what, only that they are spirits anyhow. Waking up in the woods with hot mountain coffee in cold autumn was dreamed by spirits like H.D. Thoreau and Han Shan long before I lived this November. Still impossible to be grateful enough to follow in the game trails of hermits.

Free of work and free of worry, I wrote from a cozy bus seat headed to Kanazawa. I worked on a haiku the way you toss an orange. Japanese vowels have such vicious power. You can feel them cut the air like katanas. Kanazawa. Shinkansen. Okinomiyaki. Sharp as a buzz saw some words.