Again A Bunch Of Haiku

There are books in my collection which I did start reading but couldn’t finish. Not because they were not good reads but because I was not prepared for them. Do you think that’s strange ?  It has happened with me so often that I have come to apply the principle of “things happen when you are ripe for it” to reading as well. I say so because reading is just not turning pages but ‘experiencing’ a book.

It was 2021 when Kala, my haiku mentor, shared  her “gathering of tanka verses”, a Harper Collins Publication, with the world of haiku followers. I knew I had to, as I said earlier, ‘experience’ this book. But as soon as I got down to reading  I knew this was not the time.

It’s 2025. As I maneuver unsteadily through life’s thorny path, Kala’s  the forest i know – a good four years later –  gives me the required strength and solace. After all haiku does heal.

For a reader easily intimidated by untamed emotions, Kala’s the forest i know can be overwhelming. So it was when I first made a go at it. A journey through innocent aspirations to soul wrenching deception to imperceptibly gathering the courage to embalming the inner being with subtle realizations to finally becoming one with the elements, Kala walks through the “forest” to fulfill her quest of “knowing”.

Along with the poet parambulate the readers on the “pathless path” as Kala puts it

loneliness

isn’t as bad

as having to face

fearful eyes staring back

at me in the mirror

In the deeper realms, the self is  a tricky shadow which dissipates faster as you try to catch up with it

the magician

       always acts

              surprised

by his own

magic

It’s easy to suppress yourself but difficult when you are in the vortex of somebody else’s turmoil

having to wear

several masks in life —-

if only I could

drift away between scenes

like a dragonfly

The sudden reality of lapse of time compels an inward scrutiny

mango blossom

all over

how soon

how very soon

spring has come!

Is this an oblique allusion to how very soon winter may arrive ???

the forest i know by the internationally acclaimed haiku poet, Kala Ramesh – a brooding anthology of tanka prose (in the line of haibun), tanka doha (couplets) and tanka sutra (stringlet) – is more of a self seeking journey which may in the long run take you through a process of healing the wounds inflicted by the adventure called life you over indulged in.