Join me this morning, my friends, as I borrow a poem, alter it somewhat to make it my own, and ramble on in between each stanza. Let's have some fun!

---

I sit in front of my desk and think
of all the tasks that loom,
of bills to pay and words to write,
for Hive and my blog’s room.

Hmm... that isn't great. "blog's room" might match the rhyme, but it doesn't entirely make sense. Ah well. If I'm a poet at all, and not just a poetry explainer, then haiku is my art and not Western style lyric poetry set in iambic tetrameter.

That stanza is adapted from Tolkien's lovely poem I Sit Beside the Fire and Think. It's a nice poem of nostalgia, a reflection on the passage of time, very much in the style of Wordsworth. I don't know if Tolkien was a Wordsworth fan, but this poem of his is definitely in that style anyway.

Of Bashō and Santōka,
whose haiku still discover,
words that sing of summer wind,
and heat, in shade and cover.

I was thinking the other day that I've been covering Bashō far too much over this past year or two. Most of the haiku translations I do are from him. He is hard to get away from. Not only is he the most famous haiku poet in the world, but I would guess the vast majority of haiku books in Japanese, and probably in English too, are about him. It is understandable. He occupies a similar space as Shakespeare in the West.

Still though, Santōka is probably my favorite haiku poet. He is about as far from Bashō as you can get. Whereas Bashō followed a pretty strict traditional form of 5-7-5, with a season word, Santōka often didn't even focus on nature, rarely using a season word, and almost never used the 5-7-5 structure. I need to cover more of his haiku in my posts here.

I sit before my desk and think
of topics yet to cover,
not just of far eastern poetry,
but posts of varied other.

Hmm... that last line also isn't too good. Maybe this is why I primarily write haiku: trying to pick words that stick to an ABAB rhyme scheme is hard!

In my new years post for this year I wrote that I wanted to expand a bit beyond the photo/Japanese poetry/Japanese culture posts that I have been doing most of my 7 years on Hive. I think I've done that pretty well this year so far. I've done lots of Zen posts, some finance, my music posts, and the occasional humor videos one. I'm pretty happy with this set up.

For still there are so many themes,
of which to muse and shout:
a breadth of topics, vast it seems,
for me to speak about.

My interests are broad. I enjoy reading about and learning many many things. You should see my bookshelf. I cover the entire Dewey Decimal System. But I don't really feel competent in writing about many of these topics beyond what I am most familiar with, namely Japanese poetry and Japanese history/culture. Still, I can continue to try to branch out. This is Hive, after all, and not the New Yorker: perfection is not really necessary.

I sit before my desk and think
of writings I have spun,
thousands of word of flowing ink,
shared with everyone.

Well, typed words, but many of my drafts are written on paper, in ink, with my fountain pen, so it works. I have been writing on my blog since 1996. That is almost 30 years of writing. Had I been publishing books instead of blog posts, I could be up to a few by now. There is a little regret that I haven't been doing that, but at the same time, when I started writing on my university blog in 1996, my writing stunk. Writing daily for that long has really helped me improve. If I ever do write a book, all this writing experience will come in handy.

But all the while I sit and think
of tasks I need to do,
I listen for the waking feet
of children at my door.

That would be my kids. As I've written many times, I often try to do my writing in the morning, before they wake up. And I've finished this at a perfect time, because looking at the clock, I suspect they will be waking up shortly!

Anyway, this has been a fun exercise. A parody of sorts of Tolkien's poem while running with some thoughts brought up by each stanza. Hope you enjoyed. And go Google Tolkien's original if you want to see where my inspiration was.

---

That title photo was generated by ChatGPT. I pasted the entire blog post written above in it and asked it to draw me a picture based on the post. That was the result.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.