An Alcove Set Aside for Sacred Thoughts

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The peony cut,

Something like exhaustion

Filled the twilight hours.

~ Buson (Englished by Phillip Whidden)

The haiku are as cool as whispering wind

And breaths of breezes. Haiku choose to flee

(Though silent). Finding they are ghostly twinned

With pure reserve and serendipity,

We find these breath-length poems bring the air

Of April mornings. Storms of March are far

Away like feelings of a shredded prayer

That never reaches heaven. More like haar

A haiku settles in the heart. A sigh

Is far too loud for Basho. Buson might

Let one escape. An almost frozen sky

Reserved for you, the verse sings starless night.

You open up a haiku like a bloom.

The haiku is a white rice-papered room.

©  Phillip Whidden