|
Wisteria Journal
Jim Kacian
These seventeen haibun are intended as a single work, to which there are attached an Introduction and a Dedication. Since you will be reading these only one at a time, however, it seems more appropriate that this apparatus follow the final installment, and this is where you will find them. My thanks to Simply Haiku for offering these in their entirety.
Jim Kacian
we are born in motion and bear
the consequences ever after
the rhythm of travel: sway of
saddle, clack of rail
the greatest travelers travel light—moon on water—and leave
no trace if we
are attentive we learn how little we need carry along the way
heading for Japan, country of
eight islands, exhausted with the giddy exhilaration of preparation between fitful naps
poring over books and maps, forming tentative plans, exchanging them for others saying aloud names of
places we’ve never known but now would claim
planning
the trip the gentle rolling of my tongue
the day’s salvage: the mountains of Virginia to the marsh
of Washington, D.C., to board a north-bound train to New York there an
international airport and an overstuffed jet that carries the rarified air
halfway round the globe to a lay-over in a duty-free anywhere a final hop across
open sea to Narita and Tokyo
in all places, at all hours,
throngs of fellow travelers on the move some just arriving home, some, like us,
yet outbound the
sense of self like a bubble, inclusive but fragile, privative yet
transparent a
rapid click of heels across unyielding floors echoes throughout the vast
hall sloped
shoulders of shoppers relaxing in the fluorescent underworld of duty-free soft snores from
lounges not awaiting a plane intermittent laughter from lunch-counter
stools
airport
throng a family circles about its young
all day in all directions herded against herds, trafficked
through immense spaces that yet provide no space, bundled out through the
maelstrom and into our selves yet we are unprepared for Ueno Station
color and clamor as promised in
the guide books
flags and banners, counters and kiosks selling everything that could be
desired, anything that could be procured unexpected is the welter—a million
people burrow here each day pressing my back into a man-sized hollow
scooped out of the wall i can watch without constricting the flow, and begin to
gain an appreciation for that number through the entrance, some forty yards
wide, flows a humanity packed so dense that no trace of the far wall can be
seen those
entering are met equally by those leaving; there is no space between them in
which to move; and yet, like water through water, they slide across and through
one another without a jostle, seamless, smoothly sieved into the distant
channels of their destinations
i try to follow the path of a
bright lemon dress: within moments it is lost to me a green fedora, a scarlet scarf—lost,
and lost, like drops of water down the length of a waterfall
i step out of my snug niche and
place a foot into the flow, and am effortlessly borne away
milling
crowd—a man who looks like me I can’t understand
|
Jim Kacian is a past editor of Frogpond (the international membership journal of the Haiku Society of America, and the largest haiku magazine outside of Japan), is past president of the Haiku Society of America and was a co-founder of the World Haiku Association. He has had over 1000 haiku published in English-language journals and magazines in more than 20 countries and was winner most recently of the prestigious James Hackett Award (2002). He has published 7 books, all of which have won major awards. He is author of How to Haiku, a primer for English-speaking poets, as well as numerous articles on haiku form and praxis. He owns and operates Red Moon Press, the largest publishing house dedicated to haiku in the world.