World Haiku Review (Online) March 2013
Irresistible—
harvest moon after midnight
a haiku mandate
This is how it is for him. It’s pathetic, and even he knows it’s pathetic. He wakes up hours before daylight, fully awake with his self-imposed deadline ringing in his head: two small poems, three lines each, finished before breakfast; he just keeps thinking Two Small Threes By Five, over and over again until finally he gets himself out of bed to write them.
He thinks about where to start, takes the time to look up the phrase harvest moon—an antique phrase he’s vowed never to use in his writing—but the moonlight’s just so very present, flooding the window, shining on his desktop, and illuminating his keyboard that he feels the need to check it out and be certain. Sure enough: a harvest moon, shining on.
After the first three hard-won lines, he hits the pre-set audio and the Sandhya Raga floods the room. He’s out of incense. He’s afraid he’s out of ideas. He walks to the kitchen, makes the coffee by moonlight, steel strings still ringing in the darkness:Raga Of The Harvest Moon. He looks out the window.
absolute perfect moon
coffee moon keyboard moon raga moon moon
haiku moon, release me
haiku moon, release me