Barefoot Labyrinth Haiku

By Heather Sullivan, Marcia Hodges, Tanya Gasser, Ellen Goldstein, Stephanie CasenzaThe following haikus are from a Balanced Rock retreat at the Dragonfly Yoga Studio. The group walked through a rock-lined labyrinth and observed moments in nature and put them to words in haiku fashion.  Here is a little of what emerged from the collective…In the labyrinthI see inside; I look out-The entire world unfolds.I come upon aNymph watching me from a treeWhat’s she telling me?Collapsing brown earthGently embrace my bare feetWelcome connectionOstrich egg warm stoneNature’s own hot stone massagePerfect balanced rockSpring green life outsideTrampled dry hay insideBirdsong over it allLife’s all around me.Flowers, bees, birds, trees, earth, sky.I am part of this.We were prompted:  Walk barefoot around the labyrinth and stop and notice what you notice, what grabs your attention and stop and try and encapsulate in a breath of thought.What is haiku?A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally 100 stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth-century, and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku:An old pond!A frog jumps in--the sound of water.As the form has evolved, many of these rules--including the 5/7/5 practice--have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.