Happy New Year!
Hi Everyone:
My post today is a series of short, evocative poems in honor of the New Year. They fly out to you, wonderful readers, with my best wishes for a very happy, healthy, and peaceful 2012. Special mention also speeds through cyberspace to my terrific husband Ed, born on January 1, the most exceptional New Year’s baby there ever was — Happy Birthday, Honey. He has loved me for 50 years; hard work that, especially since it includes reading all rough drafts posted to my blog, Unexpected Lives!
My poems of choice are haiku1. After reading all three I believe you’ll nod your head, grin, and then, as I did, find them permanently glued to your psyche.
This first haiku is appropriate for those of you who feel just a bit gloomy come 1/1/2012, or who simply want to bypass the annual celebrations. Know that you are not alone!
New Year’s Day –
Everything is in blossom!
I feel about average2
This second haiku is indulgent: I love chocolate at breakfast time.
New Year’s Day –
granola breakfast special
with chocolate chips3
And this last speaks to the sheer beauty and hope embedded in the new year.
Night snows
the words on New Year’s Day
clean and white3
From my family to yours: CHEERS! BOTTOMS UP! L’CHAIM! SALUD!
The next post to my blog will be on 2/1/2012. I’ll see you then!
~
1) Haiku is an unrhymed, syllabic form adapted from the Japanese: three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Because it is so brief, a haiku is necessarily imagistic, concrete and pithy, capturing a single moment in a very few words. By Bob Holman & Margery Snyder, www.About.com Guides.
2) Written by Kobaayashi Issa (1763-1827), a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect, this haiku is one of many translated and published by Robert Hass in 1994.
3) A Dictionary of Haiku Classified by Season Words with Traditional and Modern Methods by Jane Reichhold www.ahapoetry.com/aadoh/newyear.htm).
Suzann B. Goldstein lives with her husband Ed and a tree named Buster, (Read about a Shih Tzu named Buster; 12/1/2010 post, A Half-baked Story About a Crazy Dog and a Nutty Squirrel; Source: www.unexpectedlives.com). Sue is co-founder of The Valerie Fund, has her Master of Arts degree in medical sociology from Rutgers University in New Jersey, is a published author and a poet, and has just recently completed her memoir, Unexpected Lives.
Editor: Edwin C. Goldstein