Dee Evetts
Essay #5 Sept/Oct 2021
[Editor’s Note: the first two paragraphs are a revision by the author of the version originally posted.]
Where have all the insects gone? It is a question we ask ourselves with increasing frequency these days – especially those who can easily recollect road trips in summer when it was necessary to stop from time to time in order to wipe the windshield clear of dead mayflies and gnats. Or the lazy buzz of a bluebottle circling the kitchen on a summer afternoon, and the sudden silence following its abrupt exit. And the moths: so many varieties that swarmed around the street lamps at night, and occasionally immolated themselves in the candle flames of an al fresco supper. While to stand under a mature linden tree in June was to be bathed in the vibration of some thousands of bees at work overhead.
There are haiku to be written here, some of which may be nostalgic, others that attempt to sound an alert. Not least because insects (and by no means just bees) are mankind’s natural pollinators, and without them we are in serious trouble. This is, of course, just one of the impending crises caused by human activity and – more pertinently – obliviousness.
In such circumstances we might reasonably expect the number of published haiku and senryū that in some way address these challenges would have shown a significant increase. Oddly, this appears not to be the case. I have carried out a totally unscientific study, by looking at issues of a given haiku journal, spaced several years apart. Reckoning that two such comparisons would be more useful than one, for this purpose I chose Frogpond and Blithe Spirit, being the official publications of the Haiku Society of America and the British Haiku Society respectively.
Naturally such a mini-survey has subjective aspects. Notable among these is the question of how we decide what qualifies as a “green haiku”, so to speak. I allowed myself two categories of qualifiers: those poems that are transparent in their aim of making a point about the environment and humankind’s effect upon it, and the ones that can be read that way if we choose to do so. (The latter are almost always more effective, I have found, and this is for me the most interesting and compelling aspect of the genre in general.) To report in brief: I found no significant increase of the kind I was expecting to see, over the past five years. I do not know what to make of this, aside from questioning whether my sample was too small. Why would haiku poets be staying away – or shying away – from what is all too often literally a hot topic?
That must remain for now squarely in the realm of speculation. It will be more interesting for our present purposes to examine some actual specimens – regardless of when they were written or published. And when it comes to deceptive casualness, we will not likely find a better example than Marco Fraticelli’s:
as she fills my tank
we chat
about endangered species
I have introduced this archetypal poem in a previous essay, and at that time noted how Fraticelli’s light, almost humorous touch beguiles the reader into all but missing the point he intends to make – and thereby succeeds in making to great effect. He wrote this poem as long ago as the 1980’s, as best I can ascertain. That is well over half the way back from the present to 1962, the year in which Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published. Without a doubt he shared her long-sightedness. On the technical side, I have to doff my cap one more time to salute Tico’s masterly use of everyday language in this poem: in particular the word “chat” serving as the fulcrum for this original and consciousness-raising haiku.
We could well place beside this Edward J. Reilly’s playful double entendre:
climate change
my old globe
gathering dust
Google Maps has made the once ubiquitous household globe all but redundant, and if this object has not been consigned to the attic then it will most likely be gathering dust on some high shelf. Dust that is only relatively more benign than that which invades our children’s lungs – if we are unfortunate enough to live in a high-traffic or industrial area. (We do not throw our globes away; is this some form of nostalgia – or an unconscious nod to the possibility of a cyberspace meltdown?)
This is not to say that the more earnest (which does not necessarily mean labored) attempts to wake us up to reality cannot also be effective. Below is a trio of poems that confront our lack of regard for other species. These are by K.Ramesh, Ellen Compton, and Don McLeod:
moonlit forest stream
my thoughts on the tiger
not there
lifting her wings Mexican carnival
folding them the caged gorilla
the red hawk caged reaches out to the rain
One might quibble with the adjective-heavy phrasing of the first line (does it really need the word “forest”?) but the shock ending compensates for that – and it may be that Ramesh fully intended to set things up in this way. The two poems that follow it present images of ill-treatment by confinement. The hawk at least gets to soar on occasion – if one assumes that it is being kept for sport and hunting; the gorilla is doomed to live out its life this way. Does McLeod’s last line indulge in some anthropomorphizing? I don’t think so. Why wouldn’t the other primates be able to derive as much pleasure from rain as we ourselves?
It is an unpalatable truth that that some exploitation and therefore destruction of our environment is a given. Without felling trees we do not have paper – or furniture to a large extent – though we can work towards sustainability by reconsidering what species of trees or plants we use. And so it is across a vast array of what hitherto has been largely a thoughtless plundering by humankind. The following haiku have a wistful and almost elegiac tone:
town landfill old Indian camp
exhaust vents we look for arrowheads
painted green while developers browse
Wonja Brucker has caught sight of a telling detail at the town dump. But what is it telling, after all? Green may be an appropriate color when there is a commitment to restoring the land to its former condition (visibly, that is) after the landfill is full. Alternatively it is inappropriate because it attempts to mask a truth: that our worst shit will always be down there. And then there is the generally unposed question: what is going on in the depths of the fill that necessitates those vents in the first place? Patricia Okolski’s poem has by contrast an almost soporific quality; it evokes for me a warm afternoon, with two groups of people pursuing their different interests in a leisurely way. Over here are the amateur archeologists and their hangers-on, searching for native artifacts; over there the suits, sizing up their prospects for monetizing this unofficial but historic site.
The final group of poems at which we shall be looking have in common that they are devoid of editorializing comment. A scene is presented; make of it what you will. These four are by Tom Painting, Brent Partridge, paul m., and Penny Harter:
deeper erosion control —
into the backcountry pieces
a spit of asphalt of an old foundation
afternoon sun distant thunder —
the trail down overhead a satellite
a logged hill moves in the dark
It can hardly be denied that road access is vital to rural communities. And in the second example, ancient materials – preferably not of archeological significance – may of necessity be adapted for present purposes, particularly in an emergency. (It may be that I have misunderstood the poet’s intention here, and he is addressing the fact that archeological digs are particularly vulnerable to rainstorms, and to resulting destabilization. But the former interpretation strikes me as the more interesting of the two.)
The second pair of poems are more enigmatic. “afternoon sun” has an almost benign feel to it, until we ask ourselves: did this have to be a clear-cut? To which (for anyone who knows even a little about forest management) the answer is almost certainly “no”. Whether in Bali or British Columbia, there are ways of extracting mature timber from amongst younger growth, leaving the latter intact. Naturally these methods take longer, and therefore they cost more, and so affect the bottom line. Which is where legislation may have to intervene, in a so-called free market economy. (Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, I am in any case skeptical of that model. I do understand that “free” is being used in different senses, but my objection stands.)
Harter’s “distant thunder” might seem out of place in this context. Isn’t it quite simply an expression of wonder and awe? I believe it reaches further than that. It brings to mind an occasion in my mid-teens when my elder brothers and I clambered up to a conveniently flat area on the roof and waited for a sighting of Sputnik 1 as it passed directly over our home. It was precisely on time; it was eerie, beautiful, and thrilling. We knew that we were witnessing something historic, a glimpse of the world to come, a world that would be ours. Sixty years on there is a serious congestion problem with satellite debris in space. Meanwhile the active satellites – currently totaling over three thousand – are bouncing back insults and messages of hate alongside the vital information and communications for which they were designed. All of which poses the question: what was Penny Harter hearing in that distant thunder?
After all of this conjecture and interpretation, here in closing is a haiku by Alice Frampton, fit to baffle us all:
Earth Day
the pecking order
of chickens
I feel that some sacred cows are getting a prod here, but am unwilling to commit to that just yet.
