Medicine Grove

Haiku Mission – Early Attempts

In 2004 a voice came to me in a dream (an angel?) and gave me a task. I was told I should capture the essence of the human journey/experience in a haiku poem. My first thought was that even with limitless syllables, it would still be an impossible job. In the Indian scriptures it is said that even if the oceans were all turned to ink and all the trees of the world to pens, the grandeur of the divine could not be completely told. Well, access to that divine is part of the human journey. Still, it is the mission put before me by I-know-not-whom. Clearly, even before I started, I had strong scriptural evidence that I would not be successful. But I was intrigued and took a stab at it. You can read my early efforts below.

An interesting twist came when I quite recently purchased a small book with translations of prayers and songs from Tulkaram, an Indian mystic of the 1600’s. This book was published in 1932 and is long out of print. Tulkaram’s work is translated in a chapter of Daniel Ladinsky’s “Love Poems from God Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West”. Not long after encountering (and enjoying) Tulkaram’s work in this lovely book, I found mention of him in “Peace is Possible The Life and Message of Prem Rawat” by Andrea Cagan. The author relates on page 7 a story from Prem’s early life. As an infant he was brought to the park every day and was met there by a Sikh bearing flowers and sweets. When asked by Prem’s caregiver why he brought these gifts for a child to whom he had no relation, he replied that the child was the reincarnation of Sant Tukaram. I have never been sure about reincarnation, but this certainly is an interesting twist on my own story here. It is in sense believable when one reads and listens to the remarkable prose and poetry that Prem Rawat has produced in this lifetime.

As it turns out, Tulkaram was given the same mission as I, though he was not asked to restrict himself to haiku length. Most of the poems in this 1932 book are nonetheless quite short. I find this recent development intriguing, and it has revitalized my efforts. I will soon post some additional haiku. Those you read below are both from 2004. Because of the nature of my “mission” I have chosen to drop the typical seasonal reference one finds in a traditional haiku poem.

Haiku #1

cloud-rain-river-sea

returning is our journey

Beauty the path

Haiku #2

Beauty-love breathing

pattern-integrities, we.

Our true home—inside.

More to follow