"Haiku Beads"

Over the past three years I've sporadically written haiku after zazen or solving a koan. It's been an attempt to preserve things I experience so they don't slip away. Sort of like trying to freeze cascading water with a fish inside so you can come back to see it later.

Over the last year, I got the idea to look through the haiku I'd written (many of which are posted here on Zen Thrown Down) and see if I could string some of them together into a longer work. Sort of like making a string of beads with haiku.

I finally got around to trying it this morning, and it was pretty easy to do. Within a few minutes, I was able to string together four haiku that shared a seasonal theme and which, when put together, seemed to build on each other.

Coolest part? The order in which the haiku are arranged in the poem below is the same as the order in which they were written during the past three years. My mind brims with the possible meanings inherent in that fact!

Learning To Stop

Howling winter night
All creation takes shelter
I pursue the wolves

I run
forget my aim
gasping

Cold moon through branches
casting shadows on deep snow
Silent solitude

Walk like the elephant
In one breath the wind goes by
endless as starlight

- Peter Cholewinski