Speaking of Haiku ...

In Bits of Inspiration, day 18 of Poems in April at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to find inspiration in Matsuo Basho's 'The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.' 

Speaking of Haiku ...

Basho writes of the sound of temple bells

lingering on the air, and in the ear,

even after fading into silence – as if

he is hearing it now from the flowers.

                        *********

Tonight, after the poetry reading,

I come home to a message 

to call my adopted brother. 

He adopted me first – around 2007

when we were both on MySpace 

and I started haiku and tanka groups. 

He joined, and became my chief cohort;

even took over the haiku one awhile 

when I needed a rest. Later 

we migrated them to facebook,

shared the admin roles ever since. 

We started meeting for coffee or lunch

on my Christmas visits to Melbourne 

(where he lives, and I used to).

Somewhere along the line, we began

addressing each other as Sis and Bro. 

A big woolly bear of a man,

he makes music and vibrant digital art –

and wrote the best erotic poem I ever read

(a reminiscence about an old girlfriend).

Another old girlfriend lives up here.

He told her to look me up. That 

was a few years ago. Now she's one 
of my dearest friends as well as his.

Tomorrow she and I will meet

as planned last week, to see a movie.

Also I expect we'll talk about him. 

I phoned him back. He told me his news. 

He said he'd already spoken to her. 

He explained why he won't be helping

with the poetry groups any more –

or be on Facebook any more at all. 

'Haiku on Friday is yours,' he said.

He told me how much he appreciated 

my friendship – and claimed I'd got him 

writing again, all those years ago 

after he'd been stopped (I never knew).

He sounded cheerful, calm and strong.

'It'll be just the way I want,' he said.

'Quick. And the doctor's on board

with giving me lots of pain-killers.'

I hope he leaves his artworks and music

and poetry up online. I'm going to want

to keep revisiting them. 

                        *********

Even after the temple bells fall silent,

their sound will linger on the air

and rise up from the flowers.

I sent him this poem. In our last conversation, a couple of days before he died, he told me he loved it. I made a joke that I was writing his jisei (death poem) for him. We had that kind of relationship where such things could be said and understood, even at such a time. He laughed appreciatively, and said I was very cheeky.