20

To the outside world

a hopelessness turns its back—

and enshrouds the one.

Everyone has a down day every now and then.  This poem captures a (thankfully) very brief moment of depression.  I am thankful that I don’t need treatment for it but am very empathetic toward those who do struggle.  I would never give pat advice, but I can say that staying active and creating, thinking and writing help me through the occasional dark time.

Despite the dark turn, I’m really proud of how this poem turned out.  It really captures the feeling and the mood without being confessional or melodramatic.  It is pure haiku in the sense that it attempts “to depict the essence of a specific moment in time” (see below).

Stay tuned for a new haiku each day (or evening)…

Doctor Don

——————–

…a haiku series from my last month as a first-year quinquagenarian.

As with many things in life, this just happened.

I had this grand vision of taking a month-long road trip the year I turned 50 and writing a book about the experience, including thoughts and observations on my life (and life in general) so far.

Well, as John Lennon sang–but didn’t originate–in “Beautiful Boy,” life “is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  So, no trip and no book (yet).

One night a few weeks ago, I woke up from a recliner nap and boom!  I got an idea.  No rhyme, no reason, it just came to me:  For my last month as a 50-year-old, I would write a haiku each night to capture the experience. 

As the Poetry Foundation reminds us, a haiku is “a Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time” [my emphasis].

Each night for one month I will write and post a haiku.  By September 17, the end-result will be a 30-haiku series.  At that time, I’ll (hopefully) be starting a new year and chapter of what I call my “Age of Quinquagenarius.”