a poem I had been meaning to write

I wrote them over a year
ago, five haiku's, in a small collection
for my teacher Maruki

At that time I was reading
many hiakus and beggining to understand the form.

The form became a good fit. Or I became the form,
whose objective is to record an event
without recording oneself.
To look but not touch, or to leave no stone unturned and
likewise no footprints behind.

The sheet I gave to Maruki contained
six haikus. One was about highschool, and it begain
"three balck stones in a stream of white." Another
was about Autum, and
its lines were something like
"a prism ascends, a
caravan of strangers
pierces the night with its song." Autumn may
very well had been the title.
Another recalled a particularly
picturesque sky...
"confidently coreographed with gold
storm approaching"

Like a watchmaker, I
set up each part of each haiku
so that it would work without me.

I remember including one that didn't quite
pull its own weight.

I was clumsy and hard to move in
like barn boots or a fitted skirt.

But it did have a rightful place in the
collection. Whatever it was I tried to capture
I could not.Not in writing.
Zani once said to me,
If I can put a feeling into words,
and express it, then why
can't I stop feeling it.
A feeling is not words.

She had been contemplating her
sadness when she
spoke those words and I
call it her sadness in order to honor
her experience.

So why is it that I think back
upon these hiaku's ragments, which
are now only mismatched garments,and
wonder when I will find my size.