Recent Haiku by Madeleine Findlay
with one commentary
on the pond
water striders
connect the dots
hosta leaves
hold the needles
of the shedding yew
historic house --
on the manicured lawn
a dove finds its place
through the fog
level with the horizon
a duck flies
outdoor cafe --
on the crumbs of a peach scone
a bee keeps landing
This one captures the fullness of the time, the season, the near-narcotic heat, the half-eaten scone abandoned to its fate. "Outdoor" becomes here a vertical as a space where the absolute horizon is established. And those sublime bees--or is it the same one!-- come tripping from the horizon of otherness. The final ruins of the scone attract this creature associated in poetry with order and essence. The available light keeps falling on the fragments. Human preoccupations are subordinate to the larger rhythms, the great return of the summer afternoon intersecting the lesser return of the bee, determinate beauty fulfilled by and fulfilling the indeterminate sublime. In John Milbank's words, "both our receiving and our counter-giving are but one single moment . . " ("Sublimity" in Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, ed Heelas). T. D’E
