On my first visit to your house, you insist I walk bare feet in the garden. You introduce me to the plants; periwinkles, chrysanthemums, frangipani, bougainvillea, holy basil, you point faster than I can follow. I might have imagined it, but the plants seemed to know the sound of your voice.
Before I leave, you press a slim volume of Issa’s translated haiku in my palms. Between its pages you have left a fan shaped leaf. One that’s browning at the edges.
On one of your trips to Japan, you recount, you had picked up a cutting near Basho’s hut. Packing the softwood cut in loam, you had covered it loosely with clear plastic. Nine hours later, back in India, you opened the suitcase frantically, pulling out kurtas and trousers and pullovers and tossed them over the tiled floor of the airport. Stopping only when you see two tiny fan-shaped leaves nodding under the clear plastic sheet.
The Ginkgo is now ten feet tall and guards your door.
Today, I pull down the books from the shelves. One by one at first and then with increasing urgency. Hung upside down from their spines, they refuse to cough up anything more than a few desolate syllables and a parade of orphan images.
after you . . .
the ginkgo leaf
lost forever
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It's been ten days since Angelee Deodhar passed. We were regular email correspondents through our mutual commitment to haiku. Somehow Angelee seemed to have adopted me into her inner email circle, and I was a daily recipient of everything from her high art haiku and scholastic projects like the "Journeys" haibun anthologies, to the wackiest of cartoon clippings. My email inbox is very sad and lonely these days.
Angelee:
bad jokes and haiku
flood Brahma
cricket
also published on bear creek haiku - thanks Daryl
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