Sun-Dappled Stones

Leaf 351 – Essays on Haiku

 

Shizu Okino - Tied Rocks

Whenever I want to find a calm point of focus in my mind I try to visualise a round, palm-sized pebble on the bed of a clear stream or brook. It’s a very specific, eidetic scene. One which is based on any number of different, but similar streams which I’ve seen flowing down countless rugged, rocky valleys along the Cornish coast. This naturalistic image of water and stone appeals to me and lends itself to my sense of inner calm because it simultaneously represents stasis and motion. It is both calm and refreshing. Permeable and impermeable. The pebble is solid, rounded and unmoved. The water is fresh and clear, and it passes all around the smooth rock, roiling and flowing fast – almost invisible, except for the sharp motes of sunlight which glint and flash golden from the surface down to the rocky, gravelly, sandy riverbed. I have tried to capture this mental image in the following haiku:

 

 

Pebbles shimmying

beneath

sun-dappled water.

 

 

However, I’m not sure it successfully captures the essence which I was aiming to grasp. Sometimes the sentiments (in the married-forms of thoughts and feelings) don’t seem to merge or coalesce quite as easily as we intend. It can be hugely frustrating. There is that sense of certainty; a clarity of perception which somehow resists us and refuses to let itself be translated from pure feeling into words. This is why, as poets, we continue to wrestle with thoughts and themes, with images and words, revisiting verses we have written – revising and reshaping them – over and over again. It’s not so much an obsession, but rather an inexhaustible striving towards perfection. All art is a process of polishing. But in this particular instance, having already tried to capture this impression in my poem, I was taken aback to find the following, almost identical haiku written by one of my favourite Japanese writers over a century before me:

 

The stones at the bottom

Seem to be moving;

Clear water.*

 

I think all haiku poets share in this experience of finding another poet who has had a similar experience or moment of inspiration which they have attempted to encapsulate, just as we have (see also, Leaf 33). It certainly is a deeply curious thing, to peer deep into this mirror. It is a moment of connection. But, in this particular instance, stumbling across Sōseki’s haiku – its discovery was immediately qualified by a passage of interpretation which I found along with it. In this passage, R.H. Blyth comments on Sōseki’s poem, saying: “This poem is a failure, for the poet has allowed his intellect to interfere with his imagination. Movement, simple movement, is perhaps the greatest mystery of the universe. This is the meaning of our deep interest in earthquakes, the stormy sea, horse-races, the clouds, streams, rivers, tobacco smoking. In the above verse, the stones of the bottom of the brook are moving. The water is so clear that the movement can be exactly and vividly seen. The intellect qualifies this with ‘seems to be moving’ but the imagination takes no notice of this. It loves movement for its own sake; whether the movement is in the mind or outside it, does not matter.”*

 

I have to confess I am completely baffled by this interpretation. It seems curious to me that Blyth, if I am reading him correctly, has completely missed the zen-like contradiction which is placed at the heart of Sōseki’s poem. It seems to me as though Blyth is muddling the ‘seems’ and ‘are’ in relation to the movement of the stones. I read Soseki’s poem and it strikes me that he is attempting to convey the same notion as I am in my poem. This notion is quite a simple point: the stones are not moving, but it looks like they are. The play of the clear water moving around them and the way the water refracts the light causes this illusion, and this is perhaps a very zen-like perception; i.e. – even when things are still and unchanging, they change and are changing. One only has to think of Heraclitus’s statement that it is impossible to step into the same river twice, or Keats’s notion of ‘negative capability.’ Contradictions abound in life, but the ability to accept those contradictions is what is most essential to maintaining our equanimity, our balance. It seems remarkable to me that Blyth missed this, if I have read him correctly. Especially given how acutely perceptive he usually is in other instances to the zen-like nature of haiku, and also how easily he relates it to similar sentiments as expressed by Western poets, such as Keats and Wordsworth.

 

Having made this observation though, I think Blyth might well be right all the same. I was not sure my poem worked as well as I had originally intended it, even before I had discovered Sōseki’s poem. I’m still not convinced mine works any better because of this coincidence. Perhaps both Sōseki and I each missed our mark?** – Maybe I will one day manage to rephrase and reframe this poem into something better; or perhaps it may simply have to remain as it is. Unmoved and unmoving amid the flow which continues to pass all around it, glinting and ungraspable to the last. Not quite a success, but not entirely a failed effort either. After all, haiku are simply words which come together albeit only briefly fixing a thought, a feeling, or a view – extending a moment which we hope others might share.

 

 

Shizu Okino - Cho Knot (Butterfly)

 

*R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume Three: Summer-Autumn (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1982 [1952]), p. 713.

**It’s interesting to note how few of Natsume Sōseki’s haiku Blyth includes in his canonical four volume work on haiku. One gets the feeling that Blyth perhaps didn’t rate the celebrated novelist’s efforts in the art of haiku very highly.

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt - dapple.

Umbrellas Emerging

Leaf 350 – Art Inspired

 

Kishio Koizumi - Yanagi Bridge in Night Rain No.29 (1935)

A haiku inspired by Kishio Koizumi’s ‘Yanagi Bridge in Night Rain No.29’ (1935).

 

 

Eclipsing the lamplight

umbrellas emerging

with the evening rain.

 

 

 

Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997

Leaf 349 – Looking Back

 

Craig Linde - Hale-Bopp (March, 1997) Sky & Telescope

On the 1^st of April 1997, the Comet Hale-Bopp reached perihelion – the nearest point to the sun in the course of its orbit. That orbit itself has been calculated to take around 4,200 years. It is thought that the last time it passed so close to Earth was around 2215 BC, when it might have been recorded by ancient Egyptian astronomers in a text found at Saqqara, which described it as a “long-haired star.” It was a genuinely spectacular sight in the night sky, and was clearly visible to the naked eye for many months. Hale- Bopp is the brightest comet (to date) to pass through our solar system since the Great Comet of 1811; unlike the return of Halley’s Comet in 1986, which somewhat disappointingly was very much over-hyped at the time, as I recall. I have very fond memories of seeing Hale-Bopp framed in the night sky at the end of our road, hanging over Harrow-on-the-Hill in the suburbs of London, throughout the early part of that year. At the time, and even now, I find it a fascinating phenomenon to contemplate.

 

 

COMET HALE-BOPP, 1997

 

Rocks, gases, dust –

compassing the void

scribing an ellipse

between the finite

and the infinite.

 

 

 

Go! Nana, Go!

Leaf 348 – Senryu (or witty, tom-foolery)

 

Super Gran (ITV, 1985-1987)

This is probably the most ridiculous poem which I have ever written. It’s title: 五 七 五, in Japanese kanji is pronounced: “go-nana-go.” – It means: 5-7-5.

 

 

五 七 五

 

Grandma pens

a quick senryu –

Go! Nana, Go!

 

 

 

Bluesky Quarterly Review (2026) #1

January-March 2026

 

A compendium of poems posted on Bluesky in the first quarter of 2026:

 

 

Tasting of lipstick

and nylon –

the kiss that crackled.

 

***

 

Adding cream

to coffee –

first light.

 

***

 

Weaving long,

languid circles – a fly

simply flying.

 

***

 

Low dip and drip –

oars gently echoing

early morning air.

 

***

 

Leaves gently rising

– a soft wind

stirs the ash.

 

***

 

Along the shoreline –

a plover passing

in and out of view.

 

***

 

Raised by the wind –

tattered remnants

of a bleached tricolour.

 

***

 

Final curtain call –

savouring the scent

of greasepaint and roses.

 

***

 

Port of embarkation –

fond farewells and

left luggage.

 

***

 

Moth meditating

merging

into the leaf.

 

***

 

Still trying

to climb this mountain

in my smooth-soled shoes.

 

***

 

Reflecting

in the ripples –

evening rain.

 

***

 

Circling the sea

and summer sky –

a lone albatross.

 

***

 

Softly alighting

on water –

a feather drifting on.

 

***

 

Cutting clean

across my lens –

blurredkingfisherflash.

 

***

 

Speaking

without words –

her black-veiled lips.

 

***

 

Ice cold surge of

seawater, glimmering

across the sand.

 

***

 

Slumped scarecrow,

taking wing –

a murder of crows.

 

***

 

A paper lantern –

the only moon

to light the way.

 

***

 

Winter sun’s

weak glare –

clock chimes.

 

***

 

Morning blue –

moon fading

into cloud.

 

***

 

UV cream

melting into

the melanoma scar.

 

***

 

Lamplight

slowly merging

into dawn.

 

***

 

Leaf litter –

softly filtering sound

from the flow.

 

***

 

Salt sheen –

riptide and rock

savouring the raw.

 

***

 

Day’s end –

we realise it’s one of

our anniversaries.

 

Martin Parr - Bored Couple New Brighton England (1983-85) The Last Resort

First Sign of Spring

Leaf 347 – Art Inspired

 

Kaii Higashiyama - Sign of Spring (1988)

A seasonal haiku, hailing renewal and rejuvenation, inspired by Kaii Higashiyama’s ‘Sign of Spring’ (1988).

 

 

Pale buds

growing greener

– first sign of spring.

 

 

 

Harold Lloyd in Japan

Leaf 346 – Reflections

 

Harold Lloyd in Japan, c.1962

Harold Lloyd was always my favourite amongst all of the most famous comedians of the golden age of silent film in Hollywood. I’ve read several books about him, but I was curious to find a few photos of a trip he made to Japan in later life. I’d love to know more about that trip and the places he visited.

 

 

HAROLD LLOYD IN JAPAN

 

Evening star –

silently sliding shut

a silver screen.