All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

34
The Haiku Maker
Robert Congemi, Northeast Center
As too often these days, Daniel
awoke from a deep sleep, not
immediately certain of his
whereabouts, seemingly drugged, the usual
for him recently. What followed was the
process of getting back to his normal self –
a clearing of his head, the waning of pain.
It was the price he had decided of the great
stress upon him, his agency in Albany
County, the cosmos since what the
newspapers were calling the Great
Recession.
“I’m not myself,” he told a young
co-worker named Jenna, reflecting back
to an earlier conversation. “How will we
ever find places for all the homeless and
would-be homeless”
But, also, simultaneously, the morning’s
sunlight was simply overwhelming his
bedroom, making itself a means for
equilibrium, substituting warmth for
exhaustion, coziness for anxiety. Alone in
bed, in the room at the back of the little
suburban house he shared with his wife
and two children, Daniel couldn’t help
observing, regarding the moment:
“Well, isn’t this a surprise Now if only
I didn’t have to re-enter the world.
Especially today.”
So, too, shortly after rising from bed, could
he not help giving in again to an impulse
to write a tiny poem upon the matter
Finding paper and pencil in a table beside
his bed, Daniel dropped down into a chair
and thought about composing. He prepared
to write a haiku, poetry an older colleague
from work had introduced him to, whose
practice was curiously a new pleasure
for him.
“It’s fun and satisfying,” the colleague,
whose name was Donovan, observed.
Donovan had studied literature at the
university and still read a great deal. Their
offices at the agency were contiguous.
“Seventeen syllables in three lines – five,
seven, five – and if you’re any good
you might even capture how ephemeral
nature is.”
“Oh, is that all” Daniel, the social worker,
had asked.
“No, actually,” Donovan went on. “If
you’re really good, you also manage to
suggest correspondences between the
various worlds – you know, among humans,
animals, birds, flowers … ”
Robert Congemi
“Anything else” Daniel was droll, but
very interested.
“Sure,” Donovan said. “But I don’t want to
overdo it at first. Someday we’ll talk about
meaning vibrating like an arrow that has
just hit a bulls-eye.”
“I’ll do my best,” was all Daniel had
managed to say, and turned to the list of
phone calls he needed to return to clients
and unsolicited callers asking for help in
finding a place to live.
Surprisingly, this morning Daniel found
the tiny poetry coming easily to him. He
knew he wanted to connect the sunshine
with his dreaming, and to be pleasantly
ironic about it.
“Let’s see,” he said aloud, and wrote:
“‘Lighting up my room’ … that’s five
syllables.” He started the second line by
finishing his thought: “‘The sun.’” He
paused, but was having good luck and
quickly added, “‘ – though my dreams
were warm … ’” That made seven syllables
for the second line. Now for the last line.
“‘Enough and … ’” He did not struggle
for long. Was he in some kind of Buddhist
zone Donovan had told Daniel haiku was
a Buddhist thing, spiritual, mystical. He
even got his rhyme and the necessary two
syllables. “ … ‘abloom.’”
Finished, Daniel smiled at his success,
raised a wry eyebrow and somewhat
reluctantly proceeded to his morning
ablutions and dressing, reprising the
poem as he went along:
Lighting up my room
The sun – though my dreams were warm
Enough and abloom.
When these were done, Daniel went
downstairs to his kitchen to get food to take
with him to work for lunch, the creaky steps
of the house reminding him of how alone
he was without his family. His wife and two
children had gone to visit Daniel’s in-laws.
He himself had been unable to abandon his
responsibilities at work, but the children
were on school holiday and his wife Emily
had not seen her parents for several weeks.
Daniel missed his family very much, just
as he had known he would. He hated to
be separated from them in any way. The
previous day he had seen them off. Daniel
stood in the driveway with the children, at
the side of the family’s house, a bungalow
with the conventional bushes and shrubs
and porch. Emily was still inside the house,
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011