In The Spotlight at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai #1 Ubugu

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the first episode of our new feature in which I will give haiku poets / esses without their own website or weblog a stage to share their haiku. In this new feature, "In The Spoltight At Carpe Diem Haiku Kai" I will introduce haiku poets / esses to you who have shared their haiku with me through e-mail.

In this first episode I love to introduce to you Ubugu (nom de plume of Robert Gibson). Ubugu has emailed me several times and he creates wonderful haiku in my opinion. All his haiku are inspired on the prompts here at CDHK and that makes it a joy to place him in the spotlight.

Ubugu (penname of Robert Gibson)

 Here is what he emailed me about himself:

My nom de plume "ubuge" is a Japanese botanical term. Think dandelion fluff. Strictly defined as: not the fruit or seed but the appendage or group of appendages aiding in the transport of the fruit or seed. This recognizes daemonic cryptomnesia, and thereby releases me to continue on my merry way without fear of indictment.

Speaking of merry ways, Carpe Diem Haiku Kai has kept me skipping along since the beginning of this year when she found me. Some points for meditation afforded pause...

that touch
urgent on my shoulder
begs me stay

© Ubugu

Ubugu jr.

And recently Ubugu send me another beautiful piece about himself:

Life on the river, when we are allowed to stay still and absorb the view, eventually suggests that the landings and signs along the way obscure a bounty of unknowables.  I emerged in 1944, a war baby, a preborn bastard  fathered by a Air Corps Cadet, carried to term by a teenage Wisconsin girl.  Hardly uncommon, and practically excusable: grasping for handholds while the world wages war.    The LZ was Shamrock Texas, the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado.  My paternal grandparents, Dust Bowl survivors and suitcase farmers, made a place for me.  At age 6, I was given over to Cheviot Hills Military Academy, an exclusive Culver City, California boarding school.  How this was financially possible still today ranks among my chief unknowables.  There, everything by the numbers.  I learned to make my letters by the numbers.  I learned to eat by the numbers.  The environment was sterile and unbending.  Then words came along.  Then sentences.  Then books.  The marks rose off the page, transfiguring into ideas and pictures. The word for yellow was indeed yellow.  The more words and I played together – coming easy as remembering -- the better acquainted we became.    And thus began my lives in letters.     At every juncture, language patiently adjusted to my level; that which I couldn’t understand was salted away for future processing.
  

In my forty-fourth year, haiku formally found me. I was writing my second book, Rubbings – A Vietnam Pastoral, and found myself high-centered.  The Higginson/Harter book that literally flew off the bookstore shelf offered a parsimonious dimension to writing I was made ready to learn.  From then on, the architecture and resonance from little stacks of pebbles joined the Rubbings narrative. 

pendulous spirit

a cloud passes

behind the moon

i feel you there

tho when i look - nothing

blinded angel,

to touch me

i must reach to you

mist and meadow

when I see my friend

distance ceases

Now in my seventy-first year, a mental haibun travels with me: in a remote old forest of tall redwoods and ferns, a small cabin. I lean out from a paneless opening, charmed by the wonder in all I see. The peace is complete save this forest whisper:

everything here

is for you

it is not yours

© Robert Gibson (penname: Ubugu)

Houston, Texas USA

And here are haiku he shared through the mail with me:

Haiku by Ubugu:

fishing:

learning to row -
grandfather teaches steering on
something behind

clouds:

many skies, many seas
a visiting ladybug
likewise

absurdity / humor:

funny
his sudden toupee
-- not to him

undou:

pendulous spirit --
a cloud ducks behind
the moon

hearing:

whispering pines --
so - why listen for the voice
of a solitary needle?

© Ubugu

Well ... I think Robert or Ubugu is a great and gifted haiku poet and I think that these haiku he shared with us here can be a source of inspiration. However ... for this new CDHK feature I will not create a linking widget, but if you would like to share your inspired haiku than feel free to share them with us in the comment field.

Next week I will place another wonderful haiku poetess in the spotlight on Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.

PS. I will publish our next episode, a new Tokubetsudesu, later than planned.