Haiku - Pages, Walnut, Warriors, Lovers, Ghosts; Also, Pumpkin Bread

I
Lost flesh, like pages
newly turned, embodies
my sun-borne blessings.

II
Leaf & nut & bough
greenly interweave summer's
reborn tapestry.

III
The hundred-legged
warriors patrol their rich,
decadent domain.

IV
Deirdre's stolid
lovers have made a harem
of our street corners.

V
Ghosts strum guitars
upstairs & wonder where they
last knew their lovers

...

Summer is a wonderful time to be in Flagstaff. Even our dusty yard has become verdant, even if its bounty are weedy grasses and the like. The black walnut tree is brilliantly green, the slender branches - having regrown from a stump when the various, primary trunks broke in a storm years ago - are not yet full of little, woody nuts; but I love it all the same. My compost is dark from inattention, but full of its own rambling world. When I first opened it, the potato scraps had sprouted and were tall but frail. Miss Nina has already commented on the pollen that encases her bicycle whenever she takes it out for a ride - though I have been pretty immune to the allergens up here. After reading from Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End, I felt inspired to return to my haiku practice, especially since friends have commented on how certain songs stand out.

I separate out I and V ("Pages" and "Ghosts") from the others, though I post them here chronologically. (I feel that names for haiku are not exactly needed and can detract from the unity a haiku suggests to me.) I have spent a good amount of time in the sun since getting out of school and it has treated me well, though it would be wise to be more respectful of sunshine. I have tanned and burned, more the former than the latter, and for the first time in probably nine months my legs have seen some blue sky. I wasn't especially conscious of it and the mild burn is concluding. I do not think of myself as macabre, but I have taken to the rather unseemly habit of tending to the peeling skin. I know, it is unpleasant, but I can tell the change in skin tone and new freckles and it has a strange sense of discovery. Also, the sense that the sun has played such an obvious part in changing my appearance, my makeup is weirdly exciting.

The last haiku - inspired by the playing of our new upstairs housemate - I feel is rather flat in terms of subject matter, but is a pleasure to annunciate. It has a clearer manifestation of poetic strategies (assonance, consonance, alliteration, meter) than most anything I write. I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which the narrator - a modestly fictionalized incarnation of the author - describes, among other things, the teaching style of a typical rhetoric class. He disparages the emptiness of imitative learning and systematic evaluation of writers' rhetorical methods. He is under the supposition that most good pieces can be evaluated in terms of style after the fact, but are not initially intended by the author to use one strategy or another. I include V, despite anxiety about it, because I recognize the pleasure of its sound, not so much the sense of its meaning.

Oh, and I made pumpkin bread this morning. The recipe would look something like this:

Pumpkin Oat Breakfast Bread (for Jo and her gardeners)
2 cups oats
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white or whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder (maybe more at lower altitudes)
2 Tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp ground ginger (optional)
1 cup walnuts or other nuts (optional)

In a bowl, mix dry ingredients until even. Set aside.

1 large can of pureed pumpkin (or fresh if available, can replace with other squash)
1 cup plain yogurt (I like to bake with whole, but used low fat for this)
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter, cut into small pieces
1-2 Tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla or almond extract
1/3 cup turbinado sugar (or your preference)

Mix or blend together until even. Butter should remain obvious and unconsolidated. Will end up with a lighter loaf if blended. Gradually add in dry ingredients, stirring together constantly. Scoop into greased bread pan(s) (see note below) and bake at 400 F for 45-60 minutes; cover with foil if it starts to burn.

Notes: I remembered with this that baking with yogurt can be tricky because a toothpick or fork will come out clean even if the center is still... yogurty. I pulled mine out at about 35 minutes and wished I had covered it and let it bake the whole time. Also, I split this between two bread pans, but think it wiser to use either small bread pans or to put in one and cover immediately with foil to bake more evenly. Of course, every oven is a little different and, without eggs, a soft spot in the middle is perfectly edible. (I recall Miss Breanna rather enjoying doughy centers.) As with most of my recipes these days, the flour balancing is an educated guess and recommend dabbling and adapting.