Re Your first comment which took a literal approach: No need to worry about getting “it” right or wrong. The reader gets the last word. In fact, the Getting Something Read staff sent me a ball cap awhile back emblazoned with the words, “Readers Rule.” And, they do. No two people read the same poem and no one person reads the same poem twice. Haiku is not a puzzle to figure out what the author “saw” and then “felt,” though it is a miracle when these coincide.

Re Your second comment that took a metaphorical approach: That is more in line with what I “saw” and “felt” on the beach –– a summer day when unaccountably I was alone. So, for that moment, I lived in an imaginary world. You and your son both entered the world I was in for that moment –– and that is a miracle. This still does not mean the more literal response was wrong.

I do not know where you and Peter live, but if either one of you ever visit the Monterey Peninsula on California’s Central Coast, let’s go for a walk along Monterey Bay. And, overlooking Carmel Bay, please be my guests for a tour of poet Robinson Jeffers Tor House as my guest –– I am a volunteer docent as I wrote about in my first GSR “Poetry Prof” essay of October 14, 2008 and again on January 1, 2009. At Tor House we will see the tooth of narwhal hanging on the dining hall wall –– Robin’s wife, Una, teased dinner guests that it was the horn of a unicorn.

On July 28, please go on haiku walk and send your haiku (Peter too) to me as a posted comment here for all to read or to me personally if you do not want a
public exposure of your private labor. Either way, you will get an response.

Amicus poeticae,
Neal Whitman
neal@whitmanassociates.org

My son Peter says that, the seasons you’re expressing are metaphoric of the phases in one’s life. The snow is a characteristic of old age or the winter of a person’s life. Therefore, the combination of snow with summer, which could be metephoric of youth and innocense, could be interpreted as the idea of possessing the knowledge and wisdom of old age, while still being young. The characterization of this idea as being as rare as a unicorn standing alone on a beach, suggests that this phenomenon does not occur in reality, but rather is only a concept that can exist in our minds and imaginations.

Sue