Dragonflies in December

When is a moment not a moment? When is one not "in the moment"? Are not memories authentic moments? If a daydream isn't "in the moment," then poets everywhere are in trouble.

This aspect of haiku has always bothered me, the idea that the only "authentic" haiku is one that describes the immediate moment. My immediate moment, right now as I type these words, on this chilly December morning at almost 4:30, with the steam radiator making its funny little hisses and whines, the curtain swaying in the rising heat, all of this...and I am (as almost always) thinking of dragonflies, the places I've seen them, the places I'll go looking for them five months from now, assuming we have spring mornings a lot warmer than we did this past spring...

Present = past + future. Or if not exactly equals, then whatever the symbol might be for "is informed by." (You got a symbol for that, mathematicians? If not, perhaps we poets need to supply one.) I have written of poetry as time travel; time to start realizing that aspect as organic to haiku as well.

The present moment is informed by the past and by the future. All subjects for haiku. A December morning, searching for next May's dragonflies.

*

sorry, December
sitting here thinking
of dragonflies