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V. A Favorite Haiku -- Carol Conti-Entin
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Carol Conti-Entin (ag311@cleveland.freenet.edu)


                  in from the patio
                  a scatter of golden leaves
                  and one cricket

                                  Elizabeth Searle Lamb
                                  Mayfly Issue 14 -- August 1992

(NOTE: Elizabeth Searle Lamb has granted Carol Conti-Entin
one-time rights to use the above haiku in this essay for Dogwood
Blossoms.)

What a vivid scene Elizabeth Searle Lamb has given us!  Not only
do we have the contrast of golden leaves and dark cricket, but
there is the (implied) color of the indoor floor as well as that
of the patio.  Do I see the same picture that you do, or that the
author did?  Unlikely for me alone, this haiku conjures up many
possibilities.  I see patio surfaces of wood, of cement, of red
clay, of Astroturf....  I see sliding glass doors separating
inside from out or an opaque wall with a picture window and a
door ajar.  Notice, too, that the author has not specified the
leaves, thus allowing us to supply golden ones from our own
neighborhoods.

There's much in this haiku to see but also to hear, to feel,
perhaps even to smell.  Sounds: Was it the fact that the cricket
is now indoors and therefore warm enough to sing that caused
Elizabeth Searle Lamb to notice this scene in the first place?
The noun scatter evokes its verb form as we hear the brittle
leaves dispersing.  And through assonance the leaves and the
cricket meet: scatter...cricket (sk-t-r...kr-k-t).  Textures: the
leaves delicate and crisp enough to scatter, the cricket partly
hard and partly moist.  We feel the tug of wind or rustle of
skirt that carried the leaves across the threshold.

In many ways this haiku could be termed classical.  There is a
clear sense of the season: autumn, when leaves scatter and field
crickets enter houses.  This poem includes a traditional kigo
(season word): cricket.  The overall mood is one of karumi
(lightness).  Even without punctuation, the rhythm of stressed
and unstressed syllables provides a break at the end of the first
line.  The line lengths observe the short-long-short pattern.
For you syllable counters, however, notice that the breakdown is
6, 7, 4.  Try revising this haiku to fit the 5-7- 5 form.  Can
you do so without killing the rhythms that roll through the
 poem's first two lines?

Other careful touches I have noticed include the assonance
linking line 1 and line 2 (patio...scatter) and the attention
paid to placing "the" and "a" and "one" in the most appropriate
locations.  Most of all , however, the author has gone beyond
just presenting us with a "pretty nature picture" of unusually
fine craftsmanship.  Whenever I meditate o n this haiku I am left
with gratitude for the way nature ignores the wall s that humans
erect.  What wonderful surprises nature brings us, if we are not
too fastidious to appreciate them!

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