Valentine Awards 2000

The Heron's Nest
a haikai journal ... 

Volume II, Number 7: July, 2000.
Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved by the respective authors.

Editor's Choices •  Haiku: 1, 2, 3, 4 •  Index of Poets

      thump and screech–
      the long freight pulls out
      in robin's song
                                            William J. Higginson

How interesting that twice in this poem we must read ahead in order to gain the necessary insight to experience the power of the moment. "thump and screech"?! What on earth could this be? We are intentionally rattled before the cause is revealed. The second line directs our ears to the cacophony of a railroad yard: flatbeds, tankers, cattle cars, and box cars, all getting shunted into position behind one engine or another, thumping and banging as their couplings engage. But it isn't until we've heard the robin sing that we feel (through contrast) the full impact of the train.

By the second line, this particular train has its caboose. It begins to inch out of the yard into the countryside. The grip of the couplings tightens and the train slowly pulls itself taut. Car by car, the engine takes on weight as slack is reduced. It strains forward, steel wheels screeching along the rails.

All that brute power in the imagery of the first two lines, yet it's the third line that packs the punch. The marvelous thing about the final line (aside from the contrast to the train sounds) is discovering that the robin's song was there all along, long before the train pulled out–not into it but "in" it.

At first there seems to be only the railroad yard. It's an arrogance of sorts, a loud and important sounding place that carelessly impinges upon its surroundings. And here we have it: "surroundings." The place IS surrounded– surrounded by the rest of the world which is called to our attention by the robin's song. In this poem, the robin's song IS the rest of the world.

After first reading this poem I closed my eyes, relaxing into the images. As I did, the countryside seemed suddenly huge; it simply consumed the robin, the train, and the railroad yard from which it came. There are two worlds represented here (human and natural), seemingly separated by their differences. Without distractions it would be easy to bask in the pastoral world of the robin, or to be intrigued by the abrasive business of a railroad yard. We are often beguiled by one world to the exclusion of the other. But when that train pulls out of the yard, it actually pulls us IN, into the bigger world that contains both train and robin. This marvelous haiku by Bill Higginson offers us an opportunity to return to our original self, to the "big" perspective, in which we can hear both train and robin simultaneously. This train actually leads us back into nature.