Bird Music

Around 2009, the Brazilian composer Jarbas Agnelli saw a photograph by Paulo Pinto of numerous crows perched on five telephone wires, thinking to himself that they looked like a musical score. We’ve all had this experience of seeing birds on wires and noticing how they seem to be like musical notes, and some of us have written haiku about this perception. In Agnelli’s case, he wrote music based on the position of the birds, and you can hear his composition on YouTube, or see the original shorter version. Another composer, identified as Kaleidosound from South Africa, has produced music based on a different photo. See also Agnelli’s 2009 TEDx talk about his experience, with a longer version of the song, performed live. In his talk, Agnelli says, “the lesson learned was that it is possible to see poetry anywhere.”

Fortunately for Agnelli, there were enough birds on the wires to generate more than just a few notes of a composition, but often we might see only two or three birds yet still imagine them to look like musical notes. And so, as a result, over many decades, haiku poets have produced numerous poems on this subject, to the point (very quickly) of making it seem tired and clichéd—often devoid of fresh seeing. Fortunately, there are some exceptions that add fresh nuances to this common perception. The following are examples of what I’ll call “bird-music” haiku, starting with the earliest examples I’ve collected (with thanks to Charles Trumbull for his help in finding several of these, especially some of the earliest ones). In Pisa, even Ezra Pound saw birds on wires as being like musical notes on a stave. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are even earlier Japanese examples of haiku on this theme, but they wouldn’t be older than the invention of telephone or telegraph wires themselves, or of Japan’s awareness of the Western musical staff. Although such poems surely exist in Japanese (and other languages), for now, here are examples written in English, with my commentary.

Swallows on hot wire
     telegraph dots and dashes
          travel-music score.

Ga-Go (Travis S. Frosig)
American Haiku 2:2, 1964, page 59

We might be generous to this haiku, given that it was published in 1964, thus very early in the history of English-language haiku, but it has many problems that would keep it from being published today (or even a decade after its original appearance). But for the sake of this article, I mostly want to look past any such weaknesses in this poem and several other poems to come. The basic idea is still present that the birds seem to be like a musical score, but with the additional perception of telegraph dots and dashes. The poet imagines Morse code being transmitted on those wires, which might have been more common in 1964 than it is today, although I suspect that even in 1964 telegrams and Morse code were rarely sent when the telephone was already very common. An aside is that the brevity of telegrams (because one had to pay by the word) may have been an influence on Western haiku, creating a sort of receptivity to such brevity and the recipient’s engagement in reading between the lines.

Autumn symphony:
     swallows on telegraph wires
          unrehearsed music.

Catherine Neil Paton
Borrowed Water, by the Los Altos Writers Roundtable
Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966, page 73

It’s interesting to note the variety of birds mentioned in the haiku on this theme—here’s a second one on swallows. Other birds to come in the following poems are sparrows, mockingbirds, starlings, blackbirds, pigeons, crows, grackles, and both generic “birds” and implied birds.

Spring chants her folk song—
     a branch strums the barbed wire fence,
          fingered by sparrows.

Magdalene M. Douglas
American Haiku 5:1, 1967, page 30

We switch from swallows to sparrows in this poem, and from telephone wires to fence wires. In contrast, the next poem doesn’t identify the birds at all, referring to them only metaphorically as “blue-black quarter notes.”

Blue-black quarter notes
suddenly fly from their staves . . .
bare telegraph wires.

Jess Perlman
Haiku Magazine 3:1+3, Summer/Fall 1969, page 43

Here the image of musical notes “flying away” brings something new to this image, but should haiku even make such interpretations? Is this perception therefore not the thing itself, but reduced to a metaphor, where the poet’s interpretation is doing all the reader’s work?

Musical Score

Like crotchets on a stave, the swallows write
Their song along the wires where they alight.

Hō-ō (Harold Stewart)
A Chime of Windbells Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1969, page 39

Harold Stewart’s books usually featured two-line rhyming haiku translations with titles, and he extended this arrangement into his own poems, as we see here. Haiku do not have titles in Japanese (at most, occasional “headnotes,” but their function differs from titles). And end rhyme is typically problematic in haiku, drawing attention to words instead of images, and too often creating a ponderous and forced feeling in the poem’s cadence, as we see here—feeling more like Western poetry than Japanese haiku.

     Already swallows
marking telephone wires
   with notes of autumn.

Herta Rosenblatt
Modern Haiku 2:4, Autumn 1971, page 31

A touch of freshness here is the idea that the birds are notes of autumn. The word “already” suggests, too, that the birds must be early in their migration.

Mockingbird on wire
     while I was not attentive
          left without a note

Tom Bilicke
Frogpond 11:2, May 1988, page 40

The wordplay on “note” is pleasing—meaning notification as well as musical notes. That lack of notification feels like a mocking of sorts, fitting for a mockingbird.

three-string banjo
songs of starlings
on telephone wires

Jane Reichhold
A Dictionary of Haiku, Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1992

This is perhaps one of the least clichéd examples, because the wires are interpreted as being like a banjo rather than a musical staff. The “banjo,” however, is not literal but purely metaphorical.

scores of birds
on a staff of wires
―autumn symphony

Rengé / David Priebe
Brussels Sprout 10:3, September 1993, page 4

Charles Trumbull quoted this poem in his essay, “Meaning in Haiku,” in Frogpond 35:3, 2012. In his comments, Trumbull said, “This is clever use of language—the puns on ‘scores’ and ‘staff’—but in the end the poet spoon-feeds meaning to us, and thereby kills the haiku” (98). This a too-common problem with many of these haiku, a problem entirely in addition to the tired tendency of the image itself.

a thousand myriad birds
write a song
on wire

Alan Summers
Brussels Sprout 11:2, May 1994, page 37

Summers has said that this was his first published haiku. What’s interesting here is a focus not just on birds currently seen but possibly all the birds imagined from the past, each of them having their turn writing “songs” on these wires. It seems unlikely that a thousand birds would be seen on telephone wires all at once, so that unlikelihood points to the meaning of past birds (and perhaps future ones) as well as present birds. We can also take “a thousand” and “myriad” to simply mean “many,” which helps to add a present meaning to this poem.

parallel jet trails
form enormous music staff
blackbird notation

Patricia A. Laster
Brussels Sprout 12:3, September 1995, page 25

In this case the “wires” are contrails from passing jets, and the birds are flying below them. Thus the image is more dynamic than birds sitting passively on wires, which may make us wonder what sort of “music” these moving birds represent. This is the third poem of this kind quoted from Brussels Sprout, edited by Francine Porad, in a third successive year. She seemingly had no hesitation in selecting poems with this repeated subject (unless she didn’t remember the prior publications). This therefore seems to be an act of celebrating commonality in repeated subjects rather than resisting it.

       pigeons
on electric wires:
   musical score

Timothy Russell
Point Judith Light, Fall–Winter 1996, page 9

This poem’s structure is image and interpretation. In other poems shared here, the interpretation isn’t quite so direct or blunt, but even in those poems, does the haiku suffer because it contains any kind of interpretation? So often a haiku succeeds when it omits interpretation, creating space for the reader to reach their own conclusion (we are not “spoon-fed” the meaning). In workshops, I frequently say not to write about your emotion (or idea) but instead to write about what caused that feeling (or thought). With most of these bird-music haiku, it seems that the idea is privileged over experience, but that begs the question of whether the interpretive idea can still be considered part of the experience. Indeed, should all “ideas” be omitted from haiku? Surely that would narrow haiku’s range excessively. This is to say that I’m not against bird-music haiku, but it remains difficult to do them freshly.

Telephone wires
busy with little birds:
tinkling notes!

Klaus-Dieter Wirth
Kortheidshalve 8:2, February 1999, page 36

A structure similar to the previous poem occurs here too, with an interpretation in the last line. Usually interpretation is best avoided in haiku, and yet this subject itself is intentionally interpretive. At what point, though, does the interpretation feel too common, too clichéd?

        sparrows forming notes
on the phone lines without words
             for their melodies

Elizabeth Symon
Haiku Headlines #143, 12:11, Feb 2000, page 6

The best haiku of this persuasion give the barest hint of the musical note idea. In contrast, a poem such as this seems to hammer at the idea, leaving less for the reader to do, and thus have less opportunity to engage.

The emerald hour—
power lines suddenly staves,
silhouetted birds
big fat whole notes of hope
on these humming hot wires

Richard Stevenson
A Charm of Finches, Victoria, British Columbia: Ekstasis Editions, 2004, page 16

Here we have a tanka example.  Compare this poem’s reference to “hot wires” to the 1964 poem by Ga-Go (Travis S. Frosig), shared previously, which also refers to hot wires. These wires are alive with electricity, alive with communication.

       cold telephone wires—
bare staves until the crow lands
             one black note

Richard Stevenson
A Flicker at the Fascia. Mississauga, Ontario: Serengeti Press, 2005, page 12

Stevenson repeats even himself, not just with the tanka before this poem but with his later “sick in bed” poem, published in 2014. In this poem, the wires have turned from hot to cold, which seems to be a projection or speculation (as with “hot” wires) rather than a knowable experience—unless the poet has actually touched them.

Nine little swallows,
Like notes on a music staff,
Wait to sing their songs.

Jane Yolen
Count Me a Rhyme: Animal Poems by the Numbers. Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 2006

Yolen is well known as a writer for children. Even famous writers aren’t original all the time, or immune to cliché. One might argue that the idea itself is not clichéd to the children who might be encountering it for the first time through this book, but in another context the notion would seem less effective. A nuance in this poem is that the “songs” are literal bird songs, rather than being imagined songs brought to mind by the visual image of birds on wires being like notes on a musical staff. This poem also uses simile rather than metaphor (as did the Harold Stewart poem previously), which is uncommon among poems of this type.

birds perch on the wires
resembling musical notes.
What tune do they play?

Teri Prentiss and Peter Kendall
Pebbles 19:1, August 2006, page 16

The capitalization and dual attribution appears here as originally published. To say that the birds “resemble” musical notes is another way of employing simile rather than metaphor. Metaphor occurs in the last line where the simile introduced by “resembling” becomes the tune that the birds “play.” Whether these poems employ metaphor or simile, however, they still emphasize the poet’s interpretation rather than experience, if “experience” is understood to be limited to one’s primary senses rather than responses to that sensory reception.

sick in bed—
birds’ silhouettes make whole notes
on the power lines

Richard Stevenson
DailyHaiku, April 5, 2008

Here’s a third example of Stevenson employing the same bird-music motif. Compare with the “emerald hour” tanka from 2004 and the “cold telephone wires” haiku from 2005, presented previously. It may be one thing to avoid writing what others have already written (that is, to avoid tired or clichéd subjects), but it seems even more important to avoid too closely repeating the same trope within one’s own work.

birds perched on high wires
forming
musical notes

John Akasawa Wong
Shell Gathering: Southern California Haiku Study Group 2009 Anthology, Naia, ed., Pasadena: Southern California Haiku Study Group, 2009, page 39

In the book’s publication credits, no prior publication credit is listed, so this is presumably the poem’s first publication. However, I made a note of the poem in 2006 when it was submitted for that year’s Anita Saddler Weiss Haiku Contest that I judged (not selected as a winner). The contest coordinator, Cathy Drinkwater Better, confirmed for me later that the 2006 submission was written by the same author as this 2009 version, except that in 2006 the poem said “pigeons” instead of “birds.” Which version do you prefer? How does the choice of bird affect the idea of birds on wires seeming to be like notes on a musical staff?

            on a staff of wires
blue notes inked from April skies
       truly, spring’s first song

Michael J. Rosen
The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2009, page 6

This poem comes from a lovely illustrated book aimed at children. The poem is more of a syllable-counting than a haiku, though, with shortcomings such as wordiness that would keep it from being published in any of the leading haiku journals, not even counting the clichéd image. Birds, of course, are not even mentioned, but are easily implied by the poem itself, and especially by the context of the book being a collection about birds. The same author has published similar haiku collections on cats and horses.

tolls—
crows on wires changing
the musical range

Kaiser Kahn
Shiki Internet Kukai, March 2011 (free format section, on the theme of crows)

This poem stands out for its intriguing juxtaposition. What does the musical range have to do with tolls? Is the poet on a toll road? Or is he imagining tolls paid to make long-distance phone calls? The musical range itself is a different way of looking at crows on a wire, suggesting that the birds on wires represent a “different” kind of music.

a score of starlings
on the telegraph wires
the wind’s song

Claire Everett
Notes from the Gean 2:4, March 2011

Everett uses the word “score” inventively in this poem, meaning both the number of birds (even if it’s not exactly twenty) and the music they may be “writing.” An additional innovation is the suggestion that the wind is writing the song, whether it blows the birds about on the telegraph wires or not. In a way, this poem is not even an example of “bird-music” haiku like the others because the only music is that produced by the wind, not the birds, and not any perception of the birds looking like musical notes. This is how to write freshly on this theme.

Impromptu

Strung like notes on fence wire,
five midwinter crows.
Watch! See song take flight.

Brigit Truex
The Raven Chronicles 15:2, 2011, page 58

The preceding poem is not intended as a haiku, but it shows that the same trope is not limited to haiku or related Japanese poetry. Further research would no doubt find other poems, longer than this, also devoted to the same idea.

On telephone poles
          the notes are birds
          playing in 12 tone

Jack Galmitz
Letters, Aberdeen, Scotland: Gean Tree Press, 2013, page 23

How many times can this poem be rewritten? Yet, for most of the poets here, surely each poem is the first time they have written on this subject. Here I am reminded of Dobby Gibson who wrote the following in his book Polar (Alice James Books, 2005), lines I’ve quoted numerous other times in the context of déjà-ku:

It may be true that everything
has already been said,
but it’s just as true that not everyone
has had a chance to say it.

scoring concertos,
crows arrange and rearrange
on five hydro wires

R. W. Watkins
Comparing Tattoos: Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology 2015, Ottawa, Ontario: Haiku Canada, 2015, page 43

In Canada, if not elsewhere, electric wires are often called hydro wires, as a shortening of the term hydroelectric power, because electricity transmitted by the wires is often produced by water-powered dams.

hydro lines
the sixteenth notes
of grackles

Debbie Strange
From “In the Key of Grey,” a rengay with Jennifer Hambrick, third place winner on the 2019 Haiku Poets of Northern California rengay contest, Mariposa #43, Autumn/Winter 2020, page 32

Another Canadian reference to hydroelectric power lines (the author lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba). It’s interesting to compare the delicacy and efficiency of this poem to the relative heavy-handedness and wordiness of the preceding poem by R. W. Watkins and especially the earlier poems by Ga-Go (Travis S. Frosig), Magdalene M. Douglas, and Hō-ō (Harold Stewart), among others. Debbie’s poem illustrates how to write about this topic with freshness and restraint.

chords of blackbirds
rest on a wire staff
music in the air

Jillian Calahan
Posted to the NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook, 3 January 2022

Here’s a very recent example of the same idea. Each of the preceding poems is different in its own way, so there’s no question of plagiarism in any of these poems. The question that lingers is simply one of cliché. There will no doubt be more poems written in a similar musical vein. Perhaps a fresher way to interpret birds on wires is to see them as looking like an abacus. Here are three examples:

Busy abacus
of birds in swift addition
On a power line.

Gloria Maxson
Janus & SCTH 2:1 [SCTH 7:1], July 1970, page 29

winter abacus—
no sparrows on the wire
this morning

Alexey V. Andreyev
Moyayama: Russian Haiku: A Diary, Kennewick, Washington: A Small Garlic Press, 1996, page 27

on the wires
an abacus of birds . . .
I eye the tax forms

George Swede
Mainichi Daily News: Haiku in English 705, March 2008

Abacus interpretations probably do not risk cliché because they still seem relatively rare, but perhaps interpreting the wires as being anything other than telephone wires is already still a cliché. Nevertheless, even the many bird-music haiku I’ve quoted might be understood in a larger context where birds on telephone wires are mostly not interpreted as being like musical notes. That may not excuse musical interpretations as being clichéd, but their relative frequency is a factor to consider. Yet, even having just two poems on this shared subject might be too much for some readers.

What is common among both the musical staff and abacus interpretations of birds on wires is the idea of seeing those birds and wires as something other than what they are, thus revealing a mental and metaphorical imposition on the image perceived. The experience of imagining significance in a random or ambiguous visual pattern is known as pareidolia. For the sake of creating a musical composition, as Jarbas Agnelli did with his “Birds on the Wires” piece, such creative inspiration can be positive. And I would also welcome similar inspiration for haiku, to at least some degree, wherever it may arise, because it’s worthwhile to pay attention to the interpretations and realizations that occurs to you, because you might want to try implying those very thoughts. A problem with many of these bird-music haiku, however, is that few of them rise to seeing freshly, or to fresh expression, tiredly repeating nearly the exact same idea that other writers have expressed before. This is not a fault of any one individual poem, but more of a cumulative effect, with the trope being “used and reused,” as E. E. Cummings once wrote, “to the mystical moment of dullness.” The frequency of these poems also suggests that the poets may not have encountered such poems before, which seems to be a reasonable excuse for their proliferation, but perhaps journal editors should not be so forgiving, even while the poets might want to know the literature better. This subject is not the worst example of cliché. And I imagine that what is clichéd to one reader may not feel that way to others, and vice versa. Or maybe the sense of something being clichéd happens at different times for different people.

It’s fair to say that bird-music haiku face a double challenge. One is that it’s a tired subject that has already been written about too often by others, or not in sufficiently fresh ways. The other, and perhaps the more significant problem, is that these poems rely on the presentation of an interpretation of images rather than the images or experiences themselves. By withholding interpretation, the best haiku enable readers to have their own interpretations rather than, in Charlie Trumbull’s words, having the meaning spoon-fed to them. With tired subjects, I have always felt it’s fine to write your own version of the poem, to get it out of your system, but not to publish such poems. In this way you might challenge yourself to write about other subjects that haven’t already been written to death.

What do you think? Has this subject become clichéd and tiresome in haiku? Are birds on wires looking like musical notes too obvious a perception to even bother writing haiku about in the first place? In the history of déjà-ku, where a particular haiku brings to mind another poem, one common challenge is writing freshly, and how one defines freshness is of course a highly subjective question. For me, the freshest of these haiku are those by Herta Rosenblatt, Claire Everett, Debbie Strange, and perhaps Jane Reichhold, Kaiser Kahn, and one or two others. But what about all the rest? Are any of these haiku “fresh” for you?

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The Unbroken Circle: Spontaneous Similarity

On the weekend of October 10–12, 2008, Christopher Herold gave a workshop at Haiku Northwest’s first Seabeck Haiku Getaway in Seabeck, Washington, titled “Feathering the Moment.” This exercise asked everyone in attendance to think deeply for five minutes about what was happening at the moment, and to write down impressions or points of sensory awareness. This produced dozens of impressions, such as “hearing silence,” “jiggling legs,” “throats clearing,” and “I inhale what they exhale.” Christopher passed a feather to each person in the group in turn as a signal to share an awareness that he or she had written down. As the feather passed from one person to the next, these impressions were jotted on a whiteboard for everyone to see, creating a list of seeds for haiku. The next step in the exercise was for everyone to take a few moments to put haiku together based on the seeds written on the whiteboard. Then, while passing the feather around the room again, everyone shared the poems they put together. Because of this process, no poems were considered to be authored by any one person, but were more of a group effort. Under the heading of “Remarkable?” at the end of his Feathering the Moment booklet produced to commemorate the workshop, Christopher wrote the following: “Three poets penned these nearly identical haiku” (15), and here are the poems. We might consider them to be déjà-ku, although in this case produced by hive mind, starting with seeds common to all participating writers at the same time, rather than being written independently at different times or places:

I inhale
what they exhale
the circle unbroken

I inhale
what they exhale—
the circle unbroken

      I inhale
          what they exhale
the circle unbroken

What this spontaneous arising has to say about déjà-ku is that each of the three “poets” (if they may even be said to be the authors of these poems) recognized the common poetic beauty not just in the phrase “I inhale what they exhale” but in pairing that phrase with “the circle unbroken,” which was another one of the seeds written on the whiteboard. Each poem presents the juxtaposition in the same order, too. Only the punctuation or indentation varies.

Similarly, it seems that when several poets independently witness a common experience, they may independently come up with similar words to express that experience. Indeed, certain experiences will lend themselves more readily to being haiku than others—and certain phrases will lend themselves to haiku expression more readily than others too. The consequence, it seems, is that particular experiences, more likely than not, are going to use similar words and similar word orders in poems that express the intuitive poetic moment (one danger, of course, is that the most intuitive expression may be too obvious, thus suggesting possible reconsideration, and a second danger is merely recalling what someone else has already written about the same experience). These situations may make déjà-ku inevitable for certain subjects or experiences (déjà-ku is not a pejorative term, please note).

Christopher Herold referred in his booklet to “the intuition of universal interconnectedness, what Buddha Shakyamuni called ‘dependent co-arising’” (7–8). Of particular interest here is not that similar haiku may arise “independently,” but that they may arise in a dependent way—because the experience of life is interdependent rather than independent. In this sense, we may wish to celebrate our commonality of experience, even while notions of intellectual property and originality may chafe against the seeming similarity of one poem with another.

Dying to Visit a Graveyard

We’ve all had the experience of wandering through a graveyard, wondering about all the names we see, the stories behind each set of dates. Entire lives seem to be reduced to a pair of dates, and yet we contemplate the dash that separates those dates, the life that was lived in between. Yet as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “It is not the length of life, but the depth.” These speculations have often been a topic for poetry, including haiku and longer poetry, producing varied yet similar moments of reflection.

I first began thinking about this topic when I published “The Dash,” by Steve Sanfield, in my journal Tundra, #1, 1999, page 87. A note with the poem says it arose “from an interview with a convicted rapist who was once the heavyweight champion of the world.”

The Dash

        (found poem)

When you die
nothing matters but the dash.
On your tombstone it says
1933 – 2025
or something like that.
The only thing that matters
is that dash.
That dash is your life.
How you live it
and were you happy
with the way you lived it.
That’s your life.
That’s what matters—
the dash.

Another poem like this is by Linda Ellis, and it’s more famous. It has the same title as Sanfield’s poem, “The Dash,” and it appears in her book Live Your Dash (New York: Sterling Ethos, 2011). The poem even has its own website, and has appeared as a picture book (for example, see Amazon). The poem was originally written in 1996, and has been anthologized and shared widely, and as a result it appears in several slightly different versions.

The Dash

I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
from the beginning to the end.

He noted that first came the date of birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
that they spent alive on earth
and now only those who love them
know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own,
the cars . . . the house . . . the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
that can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
to consider what’s true and real
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.

To be less quick to anger
and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives
like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
and more often wear a smile . . .
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read
with your life’s actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you lived your dash?

It’s easy to relate to the sentiments of this popular poem. Here are a few additional poems on the same subject, several haiku and one tanka, arranged in order of publication. They all speak of the same moment, of noticing that dash. The first is by Randal Johnson, from his book The Slant of Winter Light (Olympia, Washington, n.p., 1993, page v):

the poet’s dates
a dash between them
that was his life

Johnson dedicated this poem to his teacher, the poet Nelson Bentley, who died in 1990, and said Bentley had died “before I could give . . . this expression of my gratitude.” Indeed, a feeling of gratitude suffuses each of these “dash” poems, though perhaps such an attitude is not immediately obvious in the following poem by Larry Kimmel, from Bottle Rockets #9, 5:1, August 2003, page 36:

a name and an epitaph
blurred by green moss
life in the end
little more than a dash
between two dates

Kimmel is not diminishing the life he is referring to, but observing that it may seem diminished by the dash, but presumably shouldn’t be. And yet he recognizes the ephemerality of life, that it’s all one mad dash from birth to death. Here I think of what may have been Issa’s death poem, as translated by Robert Hass:

A bath when you’re born,
a bath when you die,
how stupid.

Harold Stewart’s two-line rhyming version of the same poem is as follows:

Between the washing-bowls at birth and death,
All that I uttered: what a waste of breath!

And yet, all is not futility for those who wish to be positive, making the most of that dash between the beginning and the end. Here’s another Issa poem, written on the death of his daughter:

this world of dew
is but a world of dew
and yet, and yet . . .

Next is a haiku by Yvonne Cabalona, from Feel of the Handrail, an anthology she edited with W. F. Owen, Modesto, California: Leaning Bamboo Press, 2005, page 7.

old cemetery
all of those dashes
between life and death

Cabalona notes not just the dashes but how many she sees in this old cemetery. We cannot help but feel a moment of awe and respect. She also suggests that perhaps we spend our lives “dashing,” in too much of a frenzy, seldom slowing down enough to smell the roses, to make the most of life on our own terms.

A soldier’s headstone—
between one date and another
so short a line

The preceding poem is by Sylvia Forges-Ryan. It appeared in The Sixth Annual ukiaHaiku Festival Winning Entries, Ukiah, California: Ukiah Haiku Festival, 2008, page 17. Jane Reichhold was the contest judge, and this poem was the first-place winner in the “adult contemporary” category. The poem also appeared in Dandelion Clocks: Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2008, New York: Haiku Society of America, 2008, page 30. This time the focus is on the deaths of soldiers, with this one headstone implying others, and how they died young—and perhaps also shared similar death dates in service to their countries.

winter gravestone
hyphen between dates
my father’s life

James Martin, in the preceding poem, also moves from many gravestones to just one—his father’s. This poem is from Frogpond 32:2, Spring/Summer 2009, page 12. The abstraction of the “father’s life” carries the weight of every story and memory that filled it. Also, we cannot help but feel that the poet is contemplating his own life, the quality of the dash that will appear on his own gravestone.

Reading a tombstone.
The hyphen between the years
tells many stories.

This poem by Jermaine Williams appeared in Pebbles 25:2, October 2012, page 9. The last line is more explanatory compared with the same implication present in other haiku shared here, but it’s ultimately the point of each poem—that each tombstone tells a story. Or, in reality, it doesn’t, but we are left to wonder about each of the stories suggested by the dash.

the dates on Dad’s gravestone
what matters is the hyphen

The preceding poem by Frank Judge was published in Last Ginkgo Leaf: Rochester Area Haiku Group 10th Anniversary Members’ Anthology, edited by Michael Ketchek and Carolyn Coit Dancy, Rochester, New York: Rochester Area Haiku Group, 2015, page 16. It previously appeared in Brass Bell, September 2014. Whether a dash or a hyphen, yes, what matters is the life it represents.

tombstone—
between two dates
the length of life

This poem, by Kwaku Feni Adow, is from his book Between Two Dates, Kumasi, Ghana: Mamba Africa Press, 2020, page 17. He means not just the length but the quality of that life. What do we do, during the length of our lives, between the two dates each of us are given? That, as with all the other examples, is the question these poems raise, an introspective challenge to improve ourselves.

a forest blurs by—
the dash between dates
on a tombstone

This haiku by Nicholas Klacsanzky appeared in Transported, Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2022. page 76. The book features poems about different modes of transportation, so it’s easy to imagine the point of view of being on a train, which explains why the forest is blurring by. In this case the dash between the dates equates to dashing on the train—they’re not so different. So often in all of these dash poems, we see ourselves. We see the empherality of our lives.

The shared observation in these independently written poems is one to be celebrated. As we remember those who have died before us, and think about their lives, represented by that simple dash on their gravestones, we may all be inspired to deepen the quality of our lives. We might do that, in fact, by writing haiku.

Postscript

The following poem is a different take on the dash between two dates. It’s by Richard Tice and it appeared in Kingfisher #2, in December of 2020, page 18:

graveside blackberries
the death date still not cut
into her marker

The next haiku is remarkably similar in content but expressed uniquely, published in the same journal as the previous poem. This one is by Robert Moyer, from Kingfisher #3, in April of 2021, page 20:

after the dash
leaving the space—
Mother’s gravestone

The implication, of course, is that the father has died but the mother has not, yet that dash awaits a conclusion. And in both poems, the rest of the mother’s life remains to be lived.

And here’s one more poem along similar lines, by P. H. Fischer, published in First Frost #2, Fall 2021, page 17 (in a journal I coedit):

double plot
mom and I stare at
her hyphen

This haiku echoes the sensibility in the previous two poems. The mother has not yet died, but the mother and her son, for the moment, are deeply aware of the certainty of death.

—3, 15 November, 7 December 2021

Watching Haiku: People

A surprising number of haiku present the experience of someone or something watching someone or something else that, in turn, is watching someone or something. Sound complicated? The following example poems, fortunately, are clearer than my description of this shared sort of experience. I’ve presented essays on “Watching Haiku: Cats” and “Watching Haiku: Other Creatures,” and now it’s time to focus on people. Each one of these haiku, created independently, offers its own celebration of a common experience, and it’s this very sort of commonality that makes haiku poetry rewarding to both write and to read. All poems are arranged by year.

watching my daughter
watching her daughter washing
her doll’s white socks

The preceding poem by Louise Beaven appeared in The Haiku Hundred (North Shields, United Kingdom: Iron Press 1992, page 15), a book edited by David Cobb, James Kirkup, and Peter Mortimer. A common variation of these “watching” haiku is one generation watching another watching something else, which we see here. And although the youngest daughter is “washing” rather than watching, we know that her doll is being watched too.

watching you
as you watch
television

Jocelyne Villeneuve’s poem, from Marigolds in Snow (Waterloo, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 1993, page 54) takes place indoors, where she’s watching a friend or loved one. We get the sense, too, that the poet might be feeling a little bored, or wishes she could interact with the other person because the television show isn’t nearly as interesting.

breakfast time—
watching strangers across the way
watching televised war

Another television poem. This one from New Cicada 10:1, Summer 1993, page 5, is by Norma C. Plummer. Readers cannot quite know exactly what “across the way” means (a road, an alley, a gap between tenements?), but whatever the interpretation we do see the watching of those strangers watching war on television. Perhaps the author is weary of that war, and can watch its unfolding no longer, yet she cannot get away from seeing others who are still watching it.

I watch my mother
watch my husband’s
speedometer

The preceding poem by Diane Tomczak appeared in Brussels Sprout XII:2, May 1995, page 16. There’s surely a wagging finger in that stare, isn’t there? And we can wonder what might happen next. Will the husband instinctively slow down, or will the mother speak up in concern? Or will the wife beat her to it?

First China trip
Watching people watching me
Watching them

We often watch creatures in nature to see what they’re doing. Here the creature being watched is a tourist, who in turn watches those who are watching her. The poet is D. Ronnie Barrett, and the poem was published in A Solitary Leaf, the 1996 Haiku Society of America members’ anthology edited by Randy M. Brooks and Lee Gurga (page 8).

in the river reflection
he watches himself
watch the sunset

This poem appeared in 1997 in the Australian poetry journal Paper Wasp. Poet Alan J. Summers gives us someone watching himself. And yet that “himself” is not the poet, but someone the poet is seeing—and he is surely empathizing with that person’s introspection (self-reflection). The sunset must be reflecting in the water too. I’m not quite sure how the person watching a sunset (far away in the distance, with eyes looking up) could also watch himself in a river’s reflection (close by, with eyes cast down), so the logic is not quite solid with this poem, unless we take it to mean the person watches himself in the river’s reflection after he has just been watching the sunset—they cannot quite happen at the same time.

silence—
the sculptor and his head of clay
watching each other

Tomislav Mijović’s poem was published in Knots (Tolmin, Slovenia: Prijatelj Haiku Press, 1999, page 132), edited by Dimitar Anakiev and Jim Kacian. Here we have an inanimate but anthropomorphized object watching a human, a different take on this watching theme. One kind of watching is literal, the other figurative.

watching her watch
on the way to the pawn shop
for groceries

Dwight L. Wilson’s poem appeared in “Family Sequence,” in A Half-Moon Shining: Haiku from an African-American/Quaker Perspective (Princeton, New Jersey: Leopard Press, 1999, page 51). In this case the “watch” is a timepiece (a noun rather than a verb) so not strictly connected to the commonality of someone watching something watch something else, but I include it here for being in the ballpark. It’s a sad poem where the watch is being watched . . . for the last time (pun intended).

watching my daughter
watch her daughter
miss the basket

This poem is by Nina Wicker, and it appeared in Frogpond 22:3, 1999, page 44, and also in Wild Again: Selected Haiku (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2005, page 24). Here we have a hint of empathy—more than a hint. The grandparent feels love, surely, for her daughter, who is so intent on paying attention to her own daughter, perhaps worrying how the youngest daughter feels after missing a shot in a game of basketball. Even if no words are exchanged, or no pat on the back offered, the youngest daughter no doubt feels the support of her mother and grandmother who are both present to watch the game—and watch over their youngest.

4 a.m.
a neighbour I have never seen
watching the eclipse

Seán O’Connor’s poem appeared in Haiku Spirit #19 in March 2000. In this case the poet’s act of watching is not explicitly stated. However, it’s clearly implied that the poet is watching his neighbour watch the eclipse. A small tension arises in that the poet has never seen this person before, yet we also feel that they have at least a small bond in both appreciating the eclipse. Perhaps, too, this neighbor is not known to the poet because something else has been “eclipsing” the poet’s view of his neighbour, such as that neighbour being reclusive.

a short pause
watching tourists watch me
rappelling

I have no publication credit for this poem (it came to me via Charles Trumbull’s haiku database—thanks, Charlie), but it would have been written before August of 2003, which was when Kylan Jones-Huffman, its author, had died—a casualty of the war in Iraq. Here the focus of attention is on rappelling, and in this case the poet is doing the activity rather than watching someone or something else do something. The poet becomes aware that others are watching him and for a moment he is watching them watching him. And thus the reason they are watching him, rappelling down a mountain face or climbing wall, is probably no longer happening at that moment. But after that pause he will begin rappelling again.

waiting for bats
you notice me
watching you

Malcolm Williams published this poem in Presence #26 in 2005. Here we have noticing instead of watching, but still we have one person seeing someone else watching him or her. This contrasts intriguingly with the context of bats, creatures that notice their prey by echolocation instead of by sight. The bats, however, are not being watched, but two people notice each other while waiting for the unseen bats. We can imagine that both of the people are hoping the bats will fly soon, presumably at dusk. Because the bats are not present in the poem, this is more of a people poem that a creature poem.

linden shadows
watching people watching
the blind man

This poem, by Helen Buckingham, was an award-winning haiku in the English section of the ninth Suruga-Baika Literary Prize in 2007. All the other example watching poems here are about the act of seeing, but this time the poem presents someone who cannot see. The viewer is apparently under the shade of a linden tree, most likely in a place of comfort and repose, where it is easy to watch other people who are watching a blind man—who is perhaps not at ease at all.

watching him
watch someone else

This two-liner by Philomene Kocher appeared in a renku (linked collaborate verse) titled “Crows Return.” It was published in Haiku Canada Review 4:1, February 2010, and was originally written at the Haiku Canada weekend in May of 2008 in Ottawa, Ontario. Though not intended as a standalone haiku, its juxtaposition with the preceding verse, by Christine Nelson, has an amusing haiku-like effect: “her bathing suit / rides up / and has sand in it.”

clear sky
the window washer
watching us watching him

Ed Markowski’s poem tied for eighth place in the Shiki Internet Kukai (anonymous haiku contest) in November of 2008. The window washer is the source of attention, and we may immediately worry about being up at such heights. Such risks have become ordinary and accepted by the window washer, but perhaps the window washer watches the people below with a touch of envy, not necessarily to be on the ground but to be idle enough to not be working. Over and over, these “watching” poem imply empathy for a nearby person or animal.

early dawn—
I watch her on the balcony
watching it

This poem, by A. Thiagarajan, appeared in Modern Haiku 40:1, Winter–Spring 2009, page 88. It preserves that moment of appreciating someone else appreciating a natural phenomenon. It must be a beautiful sunrise, and the love or admiration that one person surely has for the other must be more beautiful yet. There’s an unspoken love here, in that one person might feel a deeper pang of love when seeing someone he or she loves appreciate something beautiful that he or she also appreciates.

watching his face
watching the moon
a passing cloud

Pat Benedict Campbell wrote this poem. It appeared on the DailyHaiku website on 4 May 2009, and later in her book The Alchemy of Tea (Carleton Place, Ontario: Catkin Press, 2019, page 39). Here we have a moon poem—the moon is so much more watchable than the sun. There’s an overtone of love in this haiku. As with the previous poem, the poet sees someone else watching the moon, and surely admiring it. And when a cloud passes over the moon, surely a “cloud” also passes over the face of the male being watched. The sense of love comes to mind because of an inherent empathy for that moment of loss because of the passing cloud. The unstated emotions of the observed person seem to extend to the concern of the observer as they both share this moment together, but in different ways.

speechday
watching my son
watching his son

Quendryth Young published this poem in the online German haiku journal Chrysanthemum, in issue #6, October 2009. Here we have intergenerational attention, and no doubt pride. So often in these poems the connection between human watchers is between generations.

I catch him
watching me
watch someone else

The word “catch” suggests an interpersonal relationship between the “me” and “him.” Did someone attractive catch the poet’s eye? The poem does not say “he catches me / watch someone else,” which would suggest guilt on the poet’s part for being caught. Instead, the poet catches someone else catching her watching someone else, which complicates the nature of the relationship. Is the “him” jealous, perhaps? We may also infer any number of possibilities for who the “someone” is—is it a child at a playground, a cute guy at a bar, a skater pirouetting in a competition? But quite aside from that, the poet has “caught” someone noticing her noticing something else, and the poem draws us into that moment. This poem by Philomene Kocher appeared in Hearing the Silence (Pointe Claire, Québec: King’s Road Press, 2011, page 14). Also note that this haiku echoes Philomene’s renku verse from 2008, quoted earlier.

Come in her nightgown
to watch the moon—
I watch her . . .

We turn from possible jealousy to love. David E. LeCount’s poem appeared in his book La Honda Journal (El Granada, California: Day’s Eye Press and Studios, 2011, page 13). When the poet and his lover (so it seems) both go out to look at the moon, he finds her the more attractive option. The word “nightgown” also gives the poem a potentially erotic overtone. No wonder he is watching her instead of the moon.

approaching squall
she watches his eyes
undressing someone else

This poem, by Cameron Mount, brings to mind an earlier one by Philomene Kocher, but more overtly suggests guilt and eroticism. Cameron’s poem appeared in Frogpond 35:2, Spring–Summer 2012, page 49. That approaching squall is not just a rainstorm but quite likely a storm of protest from the woman in this poem.

I catch her
watching me . . .
pitch on my fingers

Bill Pauly published this poem in Modern Haiku 44:2, Summer 2013, page 96. The poet is obviously busy at an important task, working with his hands, and the only clue as to what the task might be is the word “pitch.” Perhaps it’s also dangerous, which might be why the female is watching him carefully. Or perhaps she’s just admiring him for being industrious, doing whatever the work is, whether it’s dangerous or not. Either way, there’s a connection, with the “catching” having nothing to do with guilt, unlike Philomene Kocher’s earlier poem.

watching people watching me
condo balconies

This poem by Ben Moeller-Gaa appeared in the German online journal Chrysanthemum #14 in October of 2013. This is a common inner-city experience, but it could be anywhere—we’re always watching each other, or at least aware of each other because of our increasingly close proximity.

ICU
watching the machine
watching me

Jane Reichhold’s poem, from her book A Dictionary of Haiku (Gualala, California: AHA Books, second edition, 2013, page 252) lets us imagine what the machine might be in the intensive care unit. Perhaps it’s an ultrasound machine. Or perhaps it’s a machine providing medication, sustenance, or some other benefit, and thus “watching over” her. Or is it a closed-circuit video recorder, for security or safety purposes? Whatever it might be, the poet is watching back.

losing her mind—
watching a woman
as she watches herself

This poem, by Fran Witham, appeared in Bottle Rockets #31, 16:1, 2014, page 19. The poet is watching a woman who is somehow watching herself—we don’t know how. Nor do we know how the watched woman might be losing her mind, but that fact or presumption is offered as a given. Perhaps the act of watching herself incessantly is why the woman is losing her mind.

I watch someone
watch someone else
the promise of rain

Rainy and overcast days are conducive to watching—and introspection. This poem, by Nicholas Klacsanzky, is a small confession. We don’t know why he is watching someone else, or who that person is, but something that person is doing is enough to catch the observer’s attention. The unstated aspects of this poem empower readers to engage with the poem to finish its unfinishedness. All of this is presented in the context of a promise of rain, and we might easily assume that the rain, if it comes, will change the activities of the person being watched—and the watcher as well. This poem appeared in Zen and Son, by George Klacsanzky and Nicholas Klacsanzky (n.p., 2017, page 36).

watching them
not watching us
sun-hatted gardeners

Now we have a turn—in this case the people being watched are not aware of being watched and are not watching back. By this fact we can easily gather that the gardeners don’t know they are being observed because they so engrossed in their work or pastime. We get a sense of the summer season from the mention of sun hats, but we don’t know who the people identified as “us” are. Somehow we feel that the watchers are self-conscious, not necessarily for watching others at work but for not also being similarly productive or engaged in a hobby. This poem, by David Jacobs, was published in his book Buzz (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2018, page 13).

night train
watching myself
watching myself

This poem by Alan S. Bridges appeared in his ebook, In a Flash (Ormskirk, United Kingdom: Snapshot Press, 2019, page 25). It shares a moment of introspection, of seeing one’s reflection while looking out a train window. That reflection, of course, is both literal and figurative.

condolence card thinking of you thinking of him

Susan B. Auld’s poem, from Chrysanthemum Dusk (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2016, page 9) moves from sight to focus on an idea. This is a poem of empathy once again. The card is a sympathy card, but the poem is all empathy—the poet is motivated to send condolences because she wonders how her friend must be feeling when thinking of a lost loved one. While this poem is about more than the sense of sight, it extends a similar perception to other senses and feelings.

a father
chasing a child
chasing a butterfly

This poem by Garry Wilson is from Paper Mountains, the 2020 Seabeck Haiku Getaway anthology (Bellevue, Washington: 2021, page 43). In this case watching is replaced by chasing, a different kind of attention. As with all the other poems, this one is about a relationship, not just between a father and child but between one person and another, which is central to the appeal of these poems, in both writing them and reading them.

hotel mirror
watching you
watching us

The preceding haiku, by Lee Gurga, appeared in Hedgerow #134 in early 2021 (page 14). We’re in a hotel but we don’t know the rest of the story. Who (or what) is the “you,” and what are the people referred to as “us” doing? There’s a hint of lovemaking to this, but then who would the “you” be in such a situation? Perhaps the “you” is someone seen out the window through a mirror in the hotel room. Whatever the case, it’s another example of watching the watcher, and being watched, in this case with a touch of the ominous. On the other hand, and more likely, the “you” could be one of the people in the poem’s “us” just looking at themselves in the mirror, and in this case the feeling would not be ominous but just self-aware. (In this same issue of Hedgerow, another watching poem also appears, by Stephen Page: “falling snow— / a warbling vireo watching me / watching him,” which I quote in my “Watching Haiku: Other Creatures.” essay. The editor, Caroline Skanne, feels no hesitation in publishing both poems, each one with a sufficiently unique take on the idea of watching the watcher.)

old diary
cringing at myself
cringing at myself

A variation on this “watching” theme is the preceding poem by Aaron Barry, from his privately published book, Eggplants & Teardrops (n.p., 2022, page 45). In this case the poet is reading his own words about himself, cringing at his writing that cringed at his own behaviour. It’s a doubled sort of self-reflection. There is surely no end to the ways we can observe ourselves and others and be self-aware of those observations.

Allen Ginsberg purportedly said, “poets are people who notice what they notice.” While it’s one thing to be aware of watching someone or something that’s watching something else, or perhaps watching us in return, what haiku poets do with this awareness, in this case of noticing the noticing of a noticing, is to create haiku poems. The poems here celebrate these layers of taking notice.

Futhermore, haiku poems dwell in experience. Haiku poets write similar poems because they have similar experiences—and cannot help but have similar experiences, simply because they are human. In some cases the writing can be tired, saying what too many people have already said, being excessively similar or even plagiarizing another poem. But aside from such extremes, poems that have a common topic offer a cause for celebration. The similarity of such poems serves to validate our human existence, and how we share much more than we may realize. In the opening paragraph of The Haiku Handbook (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989), William J. Higginson emphasizes that the purpose of haiku is to share them. We cannot celebrate this sharing if we do not hold much experience in common.

Note: Some poems do not appear with indented lines as originally published, due to a limitation in the WordPress blog software. A nod of thanks to Charles Trumbull for his help in discovering some of these poems through his invaluable haiku database. See also “Watching Haiku: Cats” and “Watching Haiku: Other Creatures.”

Watching Haiku: Other Creatures

In my essay “Watching Haiku: Cats,” I offered sixteen poems about watching cats watch something else, sometimes with a circular sort of awareness that makes watching a conscious act. Each poem offered empathy for something smaller than the observer, sometimes with hints of danger or foreboding. Many other haiku are similar to these poems, although not about cats. Sometimes they’re about other creatures, large and small. For example, the first few of the following poems are about a frog, a squirrel, a rabbit, robins, and a mouse. Humans also appear, but each verse here features some sort of creature in addition to the watching human (read more about humans in “Watching Haiku: People”). These poems, despite their similarities, are uniquely told celebrations of a common phenomenon—noticing something that notices something else and writing haiku about it. We need not shy away from writing poems that share this surprisingly common observation, so long as we write what we experience and convey what we feel in fresh ways that we make our own. I’ve arranged the following poems chronologically by year.

green and hazel eyes
watching their first frog watching
green and hazel eyes

Elizabeth G. Hood published the preceding poem in Modern Haiku 3:1, 1972, page 23. There may well be earlier English-language poems that offer this experience, but I haven’t yet discovered them. The first and third lines undergo a sort of transformation, because we may wonder if they describe the frog’s eyes or the child’s eyes. Perhaps both. And surely this is a child, since it’s their first frog, giving the poem extra delight. Surely the frog and the child (I picture a girl) both have the same eye colour.

Cold, blustery day—
a squirrel at the pecans
spies me—spying him.

This poem is by Louise Somers Winder, and it appeared in Haiku Six, edited by Phil Garland, the sixth collection of winners from an annual haiku contest run by the Washington Poets Association (Tacoma, Washington: The Rhododendron Press, 1980. page 22). There’s a measure of delight in this poem too, in noticing something that is clearly paying attention to something else—or, in this case, you. We are left to wonder if the poet will shoo away those squirrels to protect the pecans.

Watching
the rabbit watching
the falling.

This poem appeared in Ten Years’ Collected Haiku, Volume 1 (Fanwood, New Jersey: From Here Press, 1987, page 16), by William J. Higginson. Out of context, the poem does not make it clear what is meant by “the falling.” However, it appears under the heading of “3 Poems at Niagara,” so “the falling” is obviously the great waterfall. We can wonder how conscious the rabbit is of the falling water, let alone its fame and magnificence, or if it’s just looking in its direction. That speculation may well be on the author’s mind as he is watching the rabbit. For humans, and perhaps rabbits too, the endlessly falling water is mesmerizing.

Watching
Robins watch
the snowfall

The preceding poem, by Richard Balus, was published in Haiku Zasshi Zō, Winter/Spring 1989, page 11. Here we feel the poet’s empathy for the robins, for surely that snowfall is cold, and a danger to their survival. And yet, by extension, cold temperatures are also a challenge for people. Or perhaps we feel a contrast, in that what is a nuisance to small birds is perhaps beautiful to human observers.

watching the mouse watching me

Joanne Morcom’s one-line poem saw first publication in Frogpond 17:4, Winter 1994, page 20. As with so many of these poems, the watched thing is vulnerable and wary. The watcher and watched are trapped in an instant of stalemate, and we may wonder who will twitch first.

at picnic tables
people watching gulls
watching people

This haiku, by Gordon Dickens, appeared in 2000 in the Mainichi Daily News. There’s a mutual wariness here, with both the people and the gulls deeply aware of each other. The people want to protect their food at the picnic tables, and the gulls are watching for an opportunity to snatch something to eat. The poet is another unspoken observer, watching the people who are watching the gulls watch the people.

watching my daughter
watch the sparrows
at the feeder

It amazes me how many variations this theme can take. This poem by Susan Scholl appeared in Crinkled Sunshine, the 2000 Haiku Society of America membership anthology, edited by D. Claire Gallagher. Just as the mother has compassion for her daughter who is intently watching the sparrows, so too the family demonstrates compassion for the sparrows by stocking a birdfeeder. In so many of these poems, something being watched is either something vulnerable, such as these sparrows, or a predator (in other poems), such as a cat.

Watching the gulls
watching the fishermen
watching the sea

This poem, by Ken Stein, was a “work of merit” in the 2003 R. H. Blyth Award sponsored by the World Haiku Club. In this case the stated watching begins with seagulls rather than with a person, but the unstated watching begins with the person who sees the seagulls. The fishermen are watching the sea to determine if the weather will permit them to go fishing, and if they do, surely they will bring back spoils that the gulls can enjoy too. A similar poem is the following, by Elizabeth Crocket, published online in Chrysanthemum #16 in October 2014 (and thus presented here out of chronological order):

watching the osprey
watching the fisherman
watching the fish

The details have changed but the here the fishermen have returned from a successful trip, and the bird, itself a fisher, is eager for a share.

watching the rat
watch me—
we both run

Doris Thurston gives us some humour here. I published this poem in the 2005 Haiku North America conference anthology, Tracing the Fern, which I edited with Billie Wilson (Sammamish, Washington: Press Here, 2005, page 18). Again the poem speaks of empathy, with both the human and the rodent being afraid of each other, a shared feeling, even if the poet has no sympathy for the rat.

dragonfly
watching me
watching him

Those dragonfly eyes are multifaceted, so their watching is very different from the poet’s, both in vision and in understanding. Marie Summers published this poem in White Lotus #2, Spring/Summer 2006. This is a fleeting moment, too, for surely that dragonfly will soon dart away. And yet, the other “watching” poems here are just as fleeting too, even if the creature being watched isn’t as fleeting as a dragonfly.

cold morning
a pair of ducks watching me
watching them

Yu Chang wrote the preceding poem, and it appeared on the Cornell University Mann Library’s Daily Haiku website on 4 December 2006. It also appeared in his book Small Things Make Me Laugh (Rochester, New York: Free Food Press, 2016, page 5). Haiku poetry has a tradition to write about established season words. Haiku poets and readers do not hesitate to repeat any of these common seasonal subjects, such as cherry blossoms or icicles. We should similarly not hesitate to celebrate other subjects repeatedly as well, of which this poem is another example. It takes its turn to express what the poet saw, without worrying about whether others have seen the same thing too—or perhaps doing so because others have seen it too. Here the ducks and the poet are mutually aware of each other, and perhaps the ducks are also wary of the poet—or perhaps the ducks are eager for a handout, and maybe the poet is feeling guilty for not having any bread to toss.

whales
watching
people

D. Boyer’s poem surfaced in Bottle Rockets #16, 8:2, 2007, page 16. In this case it’s clear that the people are whale watching, where they are seeing the whales (apparently) watching the people. The watchers are being watched too.

flaring nostrils
smelling me
smelling the horse

This poem goes in a different direction, speaking of the sense of smell instead of sight, but its structure is reminiscent of the watching poems. Jerome Cushman wrote this haiku, and it appeared in his book Amidst (Windsor, Connecticut: Café Nietzsche Press, 2007, page 37). Somehow the horse smelling the human makes us more deeply aware of how the horse must smell—and our nostrils must be flaring too.

desert path
a coyote watches me
watch a coyote

In Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Mirror (Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2008, page 13), James Tipton offers the preceding take on this surprisingly common haiku trope, this time with a coyote. The poem’s last word introduces an ambiguity—is it yet another coyote that isn’t aware of being watched, or is it the same coyote that is watching “me”? Either way, the poem creates tension, a tension that may be deepened by that ambiguity, which suggests that there could be more than one coyote nearby, increasing the danger to the observer. On a desert path the poet has encountered at least one coyote, and they are both suspiciously eyeing each other—and we don’t know what will happen next.

southern shore
watching a penguin
watching me

Nola Borrell published this poem in Taste of Nashi: New Zealand Haiku (Wellington, New Zealand: Windrift, 2008, page 67), a book she edited with Karen Peterson Butterworth. New Zealand has three species of penguins, which you can see on the South Island, thus the reference to the southern shore. Tourists, of course, are fascinated by these birds, but the birds may be just as fascinated with human visitors.

boy watches heron
watching for a glint
on the water

Alegria Imperial entered this poem in the Shiki Internet Kukai (anonymous haiku contest) in May of 2010 to fit the theme of fishing. That glint on the water will no doubt indicate a fish, which the heron will surely strike. The poet is an unstated observer here, watching the boy watching that heron, which is intently watching the water.

watching the deer
watch my morning train
pass by

Mark E. Brager’s poem was published in The Heron’s Nest 13:4 in December 2011. No doubt the person in the poem is on his way to work or some other obligatory destination and momentarily envies the deer’s idleness and its lack of obligation—or at least he empathizes with the deer.

me watching
something big
watching me

Previous poems have identified specific creatures that are being watched. But here we have a mystery—just something “big.” That uncertainty creates additional tension—the creature being big and unknown increases the danger. This poem, by Stephanie Baker, was published in Mariposa #32, Spring/Summer 2015, page 10. It brings to mind the following poem, by Issa, here in David Lanoue’s translation (from his http://haikuguy.com/ website):

我を見る姿も見へてうすがすみ
ware wo miru sugata mo miete usu-gasumi

that shape’s watching me
watching him . . .
thin mist

So as you can see, haiku poets have been inspired by this watching theme for centuries, and surely there are many further examples in Japanese. In Issa’s poem, like Baker’s, we have the mystery of not knowing what “that shape” might really be, made a notch more ominous by the mist.

on the one-holer
starting at his campsite dog
staring at him

after midnight mass
spotting the winking star
winking back

The preceding two poems appear together in Guy Simser’s Shaking the Bashō Tree (Edmonton, Alberta: Inkling Press, 2016, 56). The one-holer is a kind of outhouse, and this one must not even have walls around it, suggesting that this is a remote location. Perhaps no humans can see the person using the facilities, but the dog can, and the interaction suggests an understandable level of self-consciousness. In the second poem, in the context of a midnight mass, it seems as if that star is none other than God winking at the observer, and the observer returns a conspirational wink. Unlike the other poems here, the winking star is not a creature, but anthropomorphism makes it seems as such.

The solstice
I watch an owl
watching the moon

Christina Sng’s owl poem appeared on the Asahi Haikuist Network online on 16 September 2016. To me it feels like it must be the winter solstice, because of what I perceive to be a cool moon, but it could also be summer. When not modified in Japanese haiku to indicate otherwise, the moon is normally an autumn season word, but here the solstice puts this poem on the cusp between autumn and winter. Again we feel tension in wondering what the owl might be seeing by moonlight, and thus about to devour.

watching the deer
watching me
morning moon

This would seem to be a delicate and contemplative time of day, when one can see the morning moon. Perhaps the moon’s light is enough for the deer to see, if it’s not a day moon. The poet sees the deer, which is watching the person, and in that context the moon is also mentioned. The poet, John Hawk, does not need to specify whether either he or the deer are watching the moon, but that is still possibly implied. John’s poem placed in the Ninth Yamadera Bashō Memorial Museum English Haiku Contest in 2017.

rainy day
I watch you watching
an ant

Christiane Ranieri’s poem can be found in Wild Plum 3:1, Spring/Summer 2017, page 15. We feel at least a little empathy for the ant on this rainy day, and perhaps that’s what the “you” in this poem feels, and by extension so too does the observer of that person watching the ant.

We watch the falls—
it watches us,
a lone monkey

The preceding poem, by Hisashi Miyazaki, appeared in Persimmon, the 2017 anthology from the Hailstone Haiku Circle based in Kyoto, Japan (edited by Stephen Henry Gill, page 80). In this case, although the people are looking at something else (a waterfall), they are still aware of being watched by a monkey. What matters to the people is not what matters to the monkey.

warm breeze
watching your eyes
watch a butterfly

Jeannie Martin wrote the preceding poem, and it appeared in her book Blue Iris (Deerfield, New Hampshire: Nut Hut Books, 2019, page 16). The three W sounds give the poem an auditory (and visual) unity, and the near rhyme of “eyes” with “fly” adds further sonic compression. The warm breeze suggests a warm relationship and a touch of love, whether the person being watched is a lover or perhaps a child.

whale
watching
us

This poem by Patricia McKernon Runkle is from Bundled Wildflowers, the 2020 Haiku Society of America members’ anthology, edited by Bryan Rickert, page 72. It plays on the phrase “whale watching.” It’s remarkably similar to D. Boyer’s “whales / watching / people” quoted previously, from 2007, though surely created independently. Runkle’s poem feels more successful for focusing on a single whale, for retaining the “whale watching” idiom, and for making it personal (“us” instead of “people”). While we typically think of humans normally doing the watching, here the phrase is turned on its head, as the whale is watching humans—who are of course watching it. The whale is no doubt wary.

falling snow—
a warbling vireo watching me
watching him

This poem, by Stephen Page, appeared in Hedgerow #134 in early 2021 (page 30). Readers may wonder if the bird is looking to the human for birdfeed or some other handout amid the increasing cold and possible danger from the falling snow. This haiku feels like it moves beyond mere watching to suggest that the bird is imploring the human for help. And maybe the human becomes self-conscious, too, in that it may feel the need or desire to help, or at least feels empathy for the bird. (In this same issue of Hedgerow, another watching poem also appears, by Lee Gurga: “hotel mirror / watching you / watching us,” which I quote in my “Watching Haiku: People.” essay. The editor , Caroline Skanne, feels no hesitation in publishing both poems, each one with a sufficiently unique take on the idea of watching the watcher.)

watching me
watch the train
vagabond dog

Bryan Rickert penned the preceding poem, from Last Train Home, edited by Jacqueline Pearce (Vancouver, British Columbia, 2021, page 145). He also edited the Bundled Wildflowers anthology from which the previous poem by Patricia McKernon Runkle is quoted. Bryan may have written his poem before editing his anthology or perhaps after, but either way, the common subject emphasizes that the existence of either poem first did not give him pause to write his own version of this experience or accept a poem by someone else expressing this moment. This choice demonstrates the spirit of celebration we can employ in welcoming haiku about shared perceptions.

looking down
at us looking up—
owlets

Sheila Sondik wrote this haiku, and it’s from Paper Mountains, the 2020 Seabeck Haiku Getaway anthology (Bellevue, Washington: 2021, page 54). Whether watching or looking, this poem celebrates another connection between humans and animals, with a hint of empathy for that moment when those young owls might leave the nest.

those eyes
watching us watching them
baby owls

Here’s another owl poem. This haiku by Sarah Paris was printed on a postcard in September of 2021. Even without seeing the postcard, you can imagine the piercing eyes of those baby owls, and of course, we can’t help but watch right back.

watching the gray heron
watching
the waterfall

This poem is by Robert MacLean. It appeared in Wintermoon, his 2022 haiku collection from Isobar Press (Tokyo, Japan, page 15). Many birds appear in poems that employ this “watching” trope, and here we can enter the speculation as to why the heron is watching the waterfall. Perhaps it’s a small waterfall where fish might jump up the falls. Surely the heron is hoping to find a meal, so no wonder it’s fascinating for the person to watch this heron.

Whenever we write about our experiences, those experiences are very likely to have been shared by others. In fact, for haiku, we hope that they have, because that sharedness, that empathy, lies at the center of haiku appreciation. There’s a point when poems about similar topics might cross a line and be excessively similar, but I don’t find that to be the case with the preceding “watching” poems. Instead, we can celebrate their sharedness, celebrate their commonality, and revel in how each poet takes a turn to say, in his or her own way, what they hope others have experienced too.

Note: Some poems do not appear with indented lines as originally published, due to a limitation in the WordPress blog software. See also “Watching Haiku: Cats” and “Watching Haiku: People.”

Watching Haiku: Cats

For years I’ve admired the following poem by Marco Fraticelli, which first appeared in Beyond Spring Rain: Haiku Canada 25th Anniversary Members’ Anthology, edited by LeRoy Gorman (Aylmer: Québec: Haiku Canada, 2002, page 13):

watching the cat
watching the bird
watching the butterfly

Later versions also appeared as follows:

watching the cat
watching  the  sparrow
watching   the   butterfly

I tend to prefer the more specific mention of a sparrow rather than a bird, but what’s your preference? Either way, the poem has made me more aware of other poems that capture a similar moment, of noticing someone or something that is noticing something else. It’s a sort of double or even triple awareness, sometimes circular, and the reader adds another level to it all by noticing the poem that notices the poet that notices something noticing something else. The following are additional examples of similar haiku, arranged by year, all celebrating the same shared insight in unique and independently created ways. In addition, each of these poems features cats. For other animals and people, also check out “Watching Haiku: Other Creatures” and “Watching Haiku: People.” The abundance of these poems demonstrates how common this experience is, making this commonality all the more celebratory.

Second coffee break:
I watch the cat watching
the twig-tapped window

This poem is part of a set of several haiku, “A Sequence of Hours,” published by Geraldine Clinton Little in Modern Haiku 4:2, 1973, page 14. The key detail of the poem is that this is a second coffee break, so the observer seemingly has more time to observe. Cats are inveterate watchers, too, especially when kept indoors, longing to go out.

a black cat’s eyes on us watching the silence in reeds and water

This poem, by Elizabeth Searle Lamb, appeared in Frogpond 4:2, 1981, page 4. The people indicated by “us” are watching the silence in the reeds and water, but surely the cat is too, even while it also has its eyes on its observers. We are caught in a moment of mutual observation, and we may contemplate what might happen next.

I watch the cat
watching
the empty corner

Debra Bryson’s poem, from Tidepool #1, 1984, page 42, mirrors other cat haiku collected here, in that the cat is paying attention to something it might eat or at least catch. In this case, the empty corner is where some creature used to be, perhaps a mouse or an insect, or where it might soon be again. As readers we are caught in that suspended moment, just as the cat is caught in its own suspense.

August morning—
watching me watch it,
the feral cat

Neca Stoller’s poem was published in Gerald England’s book, The Art of Haiku 2000 (Hyde, United Kingdom: New Hope International, 2000, page 7). Another cat being watched, with the cat watching the human, and both are probably wondering what the other is up to.

bay window
a persian cat watches me
watching her

We can easily imagine the watcher in this poem being outside, seeing that cat in a bay window, watching the person passing by. This poem, by Kirsty Karkow, appeared online in Haiku Harvest 2:1, January–April 2001.

spying in the bushes
watching a black cat
watching us

We may wonder what the cat in this haiku might be seeing. This poem, by Connor Brearley, was printed in Around Haiku: Celebrating Haiku: Words, Music, Visual Art (Leeds, United Kingdom: ArtForms / Education Leeds / British Haiku Society, 2006, page 7). In this case we have not just one observer but many, a plural “us” that makes this a shared experience beyond just the animal being observed.

robins watching me—
watching the cat watching me
watching the robins

It’s amazing how many of these watching/cat poems there are. This one, by J. D. Nelson, appeared on the Tinywords website on 4 May 2006. Here we can wonder if the robins are in danger from the cat, which may well be why the person is watching the robins—and the cat.

I watch my neighbor
Watch her cat that is watching
A fallen fledgling

This poem is by Lorraine Ward. It was the third-place winner in the 2008 Tokutomi Haiku Contest sponsored by the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and first appeared Geppo XXXIII:4, July–August 2008, page 10. Tension again here, and danger to the fallen fledgling instead of to the observer. The poem offers a chain of attention, a chain that binds everyone and everything together, at least for a moment.

wire fence
cat watches the dog
watching her

G. R. LeBlanc’s poem appeared in Mainichi Daily News daily haiku selection online on 15 July 2010. This poem offers mutual uncertainty and surely apprehension, hence the close watching.

his last days at home
my son and I watch the cat
watching a bird

The anticipation in this poem and perhaps the danger awaiting the cat both echo with the idea of the son about to leave home. This poem by Deb Baker was published in Bottle Rockets #26, 2012, page 23.

watching the cat watch the rabbit
watching me

The writing team of Jan Conn, Mary di Michele, Susan Gillis, and Jane Munro, known as Yoko’s Dogs, produced this poem in their collaborative book Whisk (St. John’s, Newfoundland: Pedlar’s Press, 2013, page 65). The renku-like context called for a two-line poem, or they might have presented this verse in a more expected three lines. Yet something about the combination of “watching the cat” and “watch the rabbit” in the same line makes those elements more instantaneous. And then we have the turn to “watching me,” creating a full circle. This circle makes this poem differ from other examples, where only two things are watching each other, or a short litany of observers ends with something other than a return to the first observer. Again, a moment of tension—what will the cat do, and what will happen to the rabbit? But also, what about the person observing all of this? What will he or she do?

watching the cat’s eyes
watching me
watching the night

Here’s a poem by Jane Reichhold, from A Dictionary of Haiku (Gualala, California: AHA Books, second edition, 2013, page 212). The night may be foreboding to many people, but to a cat it’s an opportunity to explore, perhaps to hunt. But here the cat is no doubt confined to the house and cannot go out, yet it longs for the night, just as the person in the poem seems to long for something out in the darkness.

bird-watching
my neighbour’s cat
watches

The poet here, Ernest J. Berry, is engaged in bird-watching, and notices that the neighbor’s cat is watching him—perhaps not even aware of the birds that the poet sees. Or is the cat also watching the birds rather than the poet? The poem, which appeared in Berry’s book Getting On (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2016, page 43), engages us with that double possibility.

Watching the cat watch the pot smoke I just blew its way.

This poem, by Jonathan Hayes, appeared in the online haiku website called Haikuniverse (posted 30 December 2016). Cats seem to be disdainful about everything. Here, however, readers can’t help but imagine that the cat is particularly disdainful about the pot smoke. Whatever the case, the cat and the person in this poem are mutually observing each other, locked for a moment in the arms of attention.

lazy afternoon
watching a cat
watching the waves

Cats seem to appear in a great number of poems about watchers watching watchers—in contrast, I know of just one such poem about dogs (shared earlier). And here’s one more cat poem, by Bob Lucky, from Acorn #40, Spring 2018, page 52. We get a feeling for the day’s laziness if we have enough idleness to notice a cat that is staring, perhaps vacantly, at the waves. This might be by the ocean, or perhaps by a lake, but we easily get a sense of summer vacation from this poem, and may also wonder what the cat is thinking as it watches those waves—if it is thinking anything at all. In contrast to some of the other poems mentioned, this one does not present a tension or danger (I doubt the waves are any kind of threat). But still that watchfulness occurs, and the poet is watching too.

caged tiger
the way she looks at me
looking at her

This poem about a bigger cat, also by Bob Lucky, made its appearance in Rip-Roaring, an anthology of tiger and cat haiku edited by Corine Timmer (Estoi, Portugal: Bicadeideias Publishing, 2022, page 27). It isn’t hard to guess that the tiger in this poem wants its freedom, envying its human observer. Perhaps we too have had this experience at a zoo, with any kind of animal, and recognize the “me” in this poem as ourselves.

And so we take our turn saying what others have seen, and by doing so we join a dance of celebration. Watching cats watching something that catches their interest, just as the cat is catching our interest. We appreciate these poems because we’ve had similar experiences ourselves, or can empathize with them even if we haven’t. As writers, it is useful to be wary of keeping one’s poem from being too similar to what another person has already written, but if we remain true to our experience and let the poem speak of our own heart, our own voice and point of view, then we too can join the dance of every poetic subject imaginable. And thus we can easily agree with the poet Dobby Gibson, who wrote the following in his book Polar (Alice James Books, 2005):

It may be true that everything
has already been said,
but it’s just as true that not everyone
has had a chance to say it.

Note: Some poems do not appear with indented lines as originally published, due to a limitation in the WordPress blog software. See also “Watching Haiku: Other Creatures” and “Watching Haiku: People.”