How strange. Just when I think I'm getting the hang of this, when I'm certain that writing haiku has become a way of life for me, I forget about it for four days! I could blame Halloween or the end of daylight savings time, but the truth is I just plain forgot. For four days, haiku never rose to the surface. I didn't think about putting words to what I noticed.

There have been plenty of times in the last seven months of this journey when I have missed a day of posting. Sometimes because I didn't get online, sometimes because I didn't feel like writing, and sometimes because a poem was almost there but not quite. Never did I completely forget.

I am back-dating these next four entries just to keep one poem per page, but know that it is November 4th as I'm writing this. I think of the great Japanese masters of haiku. Basho, Buson, Issa. I think of their thousands of poems and my piddly seven months. What's four days in a lifetime of practice?

For the rest of this month, I will challenge myself to be more forgiving. Certainly, my children, my husband, and my students will benefit from this work, but I hope that I will as well. Not every haiku has to sing to me. Some only murmur. Not every day is glorious. Some are rather blah.

fog comes in behind us

we turn and our past

disappears