Peter Galen Massey

in the still grey dawn / the falling snow is ashes / from the burning year

beguiling motion / thrum and fire of my life / your supple machine

i am warm honey / i am sweet cream and cherries / lick me like candy

today we woke up / to a hundred yellow suns / on the blooming tree

my heart is dark and / dramatic. my body aches / for you. be impressed

see me as i am / every woman has the right / to be beautiful

that shimmering sea / that blue day when our hearts burned / brighter than the sun

our love was a map / to a better world. so how / did we wind up here?

no gold more precious / than this light, no pearl’s luster / warmer than your skin

no one will know how / i walked these rooms and hungered / for your smell like food

so bright is love we / see the shadows of the dead / even in the dark

i heard no music / until the music was you / all love songs are true

These haiku about love are the seventh garden of my haiku collection, seven gardens. Haiku in English are unrhymed, three-line poems which are often in a 5-7-5 format of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the third. Haiku are especially distinguished by cutting (“kiru” in Japanese) in which the poem is cut into two sections which juxtapose two elements, which can be an image, an idea, a mood, an emotion, or an experience. I follow the 5-7-5 format but ignore cutting as I please which is different from many modern haiku poets, who do the opposite.

Readers of this collection of haiku about love will notice they tell a story and the haiku speak in two voices. This was not my original intention. These haiku were written separately, over a period of years, and not in the order presented. I discovered the love story and the voices that speak it while arranging this “garden” of haiku and in the process discovered … as the well worn phrase goes … that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

why such a hurry / while the coffee comes enjoy / the light on the trees

i thought it had turned / the bloody page of history / history turned it back

keep this in your heart / this glowing warm yellow day / when it is winter

his serious face / this roman priest intent on / the business of god

clatter of dishes / clangor of the ancient bells / soft conversation