poetry from the middle

Are you in the middle of your life right now? not like mid-life crisis - I just mean are you in the middle of living? is that what you are doing? how does it feel?
I have been thinking a little about the "middle" and the classic tradition of haiku poetry. Something I admire about haiku is the attention to detail that requires being awake to life and being awake to life often invites gratitude into your heart.

Haiku are the world's shortest poems, however I've heard it said that a very good haiku contains a novel or whole universe inside only 17 syllables. I think I have a lot to learn before I could see all that in a haiku but the more time I take with them the more I see...

Here is an excerpt from the book I've been reading called The Classic Tradition of Haiku an Anthology, edited by Faubion Bowers:
In all their brevity, haiku do tell a story and paint a vivid picture, leaving it up to the reader or listener to draw the meanings out and complete them in the mind's eye. Many poets embellished their writing with shorthand, brush-stroke drawings. Each haiku also contains a hidden dualism: the near and the far, foreground and background, then and now, past and present, high and low, sound and silence, and temporality and eternity.

Iio Sogi who lived from 1421-1502 was a master renga poet (renga means linked verse and is the origin of today's haiku) he wrote some very special poems - apparently he came from a low social background but was given the highest honor a poet could receive in his day by the shogun (or military ruler in japan) Here are some of my favorite poems of his in translation --

Snow yet remaining
the mountain slopes are misty
an evening in spring

However low one may be
it is in holding oneself in sway
that is imperative

everything from my old heart has vanished
leaving not a trace


(the last one is a translation of my own - actually - I just read the translation wrong - but the way I wrote it is the way read it - and I like it)


Here is some meanderings of my own over the last week - with influence from haiku but no haiku yet- I'm still trying to let those sink in


Shogun Song

I am a whale, of all animals, a big whale!
I am a shogun
my heart and stomach are interchangeable
I write poetry from my middle
water, underwater lava,
ridges that are the ocean's back
it stings my heart
it stings my heart
pom pom underwater plants
wave where the clams lay
and the deer swim back
to pine tree island so shining and plain
the mountains move off my shoulders
I am a deer
pines and sage
it's all the same
it stings my heart
it stings my heart
no one can equal the cherry blossom
no one can equal the moon