17 Friday Jun 2022
Posted in haibun, nature, Published Poems, senryu
You can sit on a lawn or in a field, or forest or by a stream; almost anyplace
and just sit there sensing whatever. The longer you sit the better for settling
out the business of the mind and becoming open to the myriad senses of
sound, sight, smell and the way all manner of life is right there to discover…
page by page…
she knows on each one
where Waldo is
Frogpond v. XXIV no.3 2001
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in haibun, Tom Clausen biographical info
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about haibun :
“Whether we think of our life as special or not, in the flow of experience come special moments that punctuate our sensibility and memory. Haibun are records and renderings of our passage through life, and an attempt to distill the highlights of our very diverse experiences. The poem that typically concludes the haibun ought to reflect the heart of our inner understanding of outward experience.”
Tom Clausen was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1951 and continues to be a resident of this isolated finger lakes college town. Today, Tom shares the same house he grew up in with Berta and their two children, Casey and Emma. Tom has worked for more than twenty years at Cornell University in the Mann Library where he coordinates the staff and student assistants in the document services–circulation department. Tom graduated from Cornell in 1973 and after several years of bicycle trip adventures, he settled back where he started. His books include Autumn Wind in the Cracks, Unraked Leaves, and Standing Here (1994, 1995, 1998; all self-published) and A Work of Love (Tiny Poems Press, 1997).
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, haibun, haiku, Published Poems, spring
In the Woods
In 1962 when I was eleven I fancied myself to be a Last of the Mohicans, Huckleberry Finn, outback wilderness child, and had chosen the name “Wonapsa” to inspire and fulfill the fantasies I played out in the woods and gorges behind our house. The woods contained the world I loved, both real and imaginary. I would spy on rabbits, chipmunks, and woodpeckers. Sometimes I would sit as still as I could to see what being a ghost was all about. I laid on the ground, smelling the dirt and embracing a patch of earth just my size. I would climb trees listening to the wind sigh in the boughs and learn the creak that comes from deep in trees. The woods were filled with secrets I wanted to know.
sun after rain–
the garter snake fresh
from its skin
In the spring it was momentous to find mayapples and hepaticas and know new life arises from the litter and wreckage of winters’ leaving. One day while scampering up and down steep slopes in random search for tiny skulls, feathers, fossils, or a special perch to sit awhile, I peeked over a ridge top to see a man and a woman lying out on a ledge a way below me. What they were doing I had roughly heard about but never seen. The trees between me and them were few but a bit of guilt kept me from a steady stare. I became aware of the unlikeliness of what I was witnessing and felt an exhilaration of discovery. To see their flesh while they kept some clothes on filled me with curiosity. I do not re- member a distinct conclusion, my memory choosing to focus on the unison of their movements.
That night my heart and mind recreated it all over and over. What images I had seen. How purely animal and natural they were. How unexpected and free a view I had.
Years go by and that ledge is still there. My walks in the woods these days sometimes pass that place. I always look a little and remember. I’ve never seen anyone else there.
barren woods–
a clump of wild onion
scents the air
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 1
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, haibun, Published Poems, senryu
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Pencils
To this day I keep many more pencils than I need or use. Beside the computer at home and at work, beside the bed I keep them as practical artifacts of a former self and simpler time. In elementary school I began a pencil collection and by middle school I had become known as the pencil kid. I studied the various brands enough to recognize the unique patterns in the little metal tops that hold the eraser. Friends would approach me and hold out a pencil with just the head visible for me to guess the brand name. Some of my favorites were Venus Medalists, Ticonderogas, Eberhard Faber Mongols, Herald Square Mallards and Mohicans by Empire. My collection grew with a certain idiosyncratic reputation. The days of Bic pens, fountain pens and then keyboards came yet I’ve never been able to view any pencil as anything but a link to those days then and that special meaning in my heart.
high school bully—
holding the pencil out at arms length
before snapping it
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 4
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, americana, haibun, Published Poems, senryu
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Middle Way
At times it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The struggle to be, just to exist requires each of us to be true to too many things to make sense of which one is right.
a few graves apart:
neighbors who had nothing to say
to each other
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 4
tom clausen 