High Sierra Haiku

                                    by Shige Hara

  At the Base camp

Under the old pine tree

Gary cross-legged, chanting sutras--

The sun is still on the way

   At the Headwater of the Rock Creek

Cast an elk-hair caddis to a golden

cruising along the shore of Sky Blue

Lake

caught in the net of a watershed, I'm jumping

  From the Upper Soldier Lake

Looking down Mt. Fuji

telling the story of glacier

we are three happy snails

  New Army Pass

You go, I go

up the trail, down the trail,

hidden in the mountain

  On Pacific Crest Trail

On the top of foxtail

squats a raven--

summer breeze below

                             (Summer of 2007)

Shige (yoshi) Hara ia a professor of English at Dokkyo University, Japan, and has been translating American poetry into Japanese, of which his most recent work is "Danger on Peaks" by Gary Snyder (2007). He is currently a visiting scholar at UC Davis (April 2007 -March 2008), and writing a book on West Coast Poetry. One of the chapters will be called "Poets in the High Sierras".