written By
“It’s a pleasure to name things
as long as one doesn’t get
hung up about it.”
-Jeffrey Harrison, “The Names of Things”
I have spent much of the past year
immersing myself in haiku—taking long walks
along the ponds north of campus, a notebook
in hand; meeting monthly with a trio
of seasoned haiku poets to learn
from their vision; reading the classics
like Basho, whose poems I rehearse as I lie in bed
and fail to slip into sleep.
But in trying to write my own haiku,
I have struggled to reckon with my astonishing ignorance
of flora and fauna, the precise naming of which
is central to evoking an original experience
for the reader. Even now, I am being tested: a large black bird
struts in front of me in the slush, and in its fruitless pecking
I know there resides a poem—but I am unable to write it
because I cannot tell a raven from a crow.
