Haiku Exchange

The older I get, the more I appreciate the variety of my friends and all the ways we keep in touch.  I've been part of a haiku exchange with some South Carolina Low Country friends.  It began with political e-mails with a group of people, many of whom worked together at Trident Tech, the community college in the Charleston area--for reasons too convoluted to explore here, South Carolina calls all its colleges technical colleges.

I think back to that experience working at that college--one of the gifts of that school was the amazing colleagues that I had.  I have been lucky to have always had wonderful colleagues.  That may be one of the advantages of working at schools that aren't first tier schools with people who understand the stakes, people who put students first for the most part.

The political e-mail exchange turned into a haiku exchange--what a treat!  I love reading the haikus, and I love being inspired.  One woman said that she's also writing in German or Spanish, which has helped her get back to her language studies--what a cool idea!  I imagine that using haiku could help in all kinds of teaching arenas.

Her haiku about tomatoes made me think about our own garden.  We can't seem to grow a tomato of any size, but our milkweed is quite happy.  On Saturday, I wrote this Facebook post:  "When I thought of opening a café, I confess that I wasn't thinking about serving caterpillars and ladybugs:"

I included photos of the plants and caterpillars

This morning, I created this haiku:

Tomato wasteland
milkweed blooms, monarchs visit
other species fed

This morning, my brain went back to all the ways these friends have fed me.  Our friendship deepened the year we got together to bake cookies.  The parents of one friend had a restaurant in downtown Charleston; we gathered in the restaurant's kitchen on a Sunday in December and baked cookies together and had such a good time that we did that regularly.

One of the other friends wanted more vegetarian food in her life, and she knew we were inclined the same way, so she organized a food swap.  We'd make a big batch of something and bring containers to school where we'd swap.  I can't remember if just one of us cooked each week or if we all did.

That community college fostered amazing developments.  One of our colleagues had a variety of restaurant connections, and he ran the Culinary department for the school, so he was instrumental in organizing an organic veggie co-op.  Other colleagues kept us up to date with literary and artistic developments in the larger world.

As I'm writing and reflecting this morning, I wonder why I ever left.  It's important for me to remember that the larger Lowcountry South Carolina culture was not as inclusive as it is now--and it's not that inclusive now.  I wanted to be someplace more multicultural, with a thriving arts scene.

I achieved that goal.  I didn't anticipate how the work of earning the money necessary to live here would leave me too exhausted many days to participate in the culture I was seeking.

Let me remember that lesson as I think about the future.

As I did my morning jog, with a sunrise particularly beautiful today, these lines came to me:

Sunrise painted lake
Decomposing Christmas trees
Warm breath of future

If I had to title this one, I might go with this: Inauguration Eve.