Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I first became familiar with haiku when I was living in the remote township of Narok on the African savannah. I was much taken by Bashō’s book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and wove his travels into my own adventures.  I have often thought that the expansive African setting and the miniature poetic form make an unusual combination which offers fresh opportunities to a writer of haiku.

Did Basho know that
From the river Sumida
He would come so far?
                                                        
                                                      Lions roar at night
                                                      Assuring me of safety
                                                      In my stone-walled house.

To know your own place here,
Lie down on the open plain
And wait for vultures.

                                                      A scarab beetle
                                                      Rolls its dung ball down the road
                                                      In the tracks of tyres.

Clouds over the hills
And dust devils on the plains,
Two seasons at once.

                                                      Swallows in the eaves
                                                      Have left another mud nest
                                                      In the distant north

If you pray for rain,
Do it within one day’s walk
Of the mountain spring.

                                                      Up the mountain path
                                                      The elephant chases me
                                                      And my fishing rod.

There among the clouds,
Is it Mount Fuji’s snow, or
Kilimanjaro’s ?