From Anchorage to Zebulon: In Search of Missed Connections
eyes
Champagne and love games.
Soft moonlight,laughing with boo.
Favorite days with you.
Dreamy lazy dayz.
Eyes piercing, dramatic gaze.
Friends till were in graves.
While Seattle was the epicenter for Missed Connections haiku, forums in other locations were not strangers to the allure of 5-7-5 poetic construct!
wind
Gone With The Wind. I
will Never be hungry. A
gin and tonic, please.
While the Seattle Haiku for Hopefuls series was the most regular use of haiku on Missed Connections, it inspired many others to try their hand (and luck) at poetry and love. This one has an amusing, modern-day Scarlett O’Hara edge to it.
he is super cute
and the babes really love him
my dog is so good
My pup had quite the weekend.
Fremont, Breweries, Ballard farmers market, Greenlake; he was
all about town and getting lots of petting and praising.
Something about these Summer-y days really brought out the (young parents of) dog-loving toddlers who like to stumble over, look him eye-to-eye, and stick their hand into his wet mouth.
I look for the parents’ eyes. “He’s never bitten (yet).” I assure them.
He is really patient with them like he knows they are delicate like “puppies”.
(He’s also patient with dog deprived adults who can’t resist his four-legged charms either.)
And I don’t mind too much those last few hold-outs who only speak to my dog, and not me.
But as a regional culture, I think we rank highly on the “ask first before touching (a dog) spectrum”.
Over the years of posting the Haiku for Hearts and Haiku for Hopefuls series to the Seattle Missed Connections, the writer shared a few photos of this dog. I’m going to go out on a limb and state this little guy is the subject of this haiku and corresponding story. He’s certainly super cute and deserving of any fame and fortune these original postings brought him!
Love
My instinct says, “Save.”
But to protect my loved ones,
I’d strike instantly.
It is such a natural reflex actually that it almost went right by without me noticing it.
When we (I) get involved emotionally with someone special, a transformation occurs. The primal drum beat of the protector awakens from it’s hibernation. ‘Guard the cave or die trying.’
(Lucky that my new place has a real door and a bolt. It makes the job way easier.)
It’s no joke though about that feeling we get. It’s a powerful surge of ancient DNA sequencing that makes us prepared to defend, and to protect our precious ones, and, then, to begin to live in dread of losing them.
It permeates our self and seeps through our total being.
It explains the searing pain of break-ups and failed unions, of rejection; our primal fears coming to modern fruition. It burns through us in reverse, an acid tearing away all the old assumptions and synaptic predictions we had made about the life we expected.
The only salve is to remember the good. The good moments, the sharing and loving times. They don’t lose their luster. They just become untouchable in life, but captured like photos of our best moments in an un-burnable book of our lives.
I’m coming to the end of my stash of “Haiku for Hopefuls” poems from the Seattle Missed Connections! I still have a few more Haiku for Hearts, but this is the second to last of the Hopefuls series. Enjoy!
tall
Just be what you’d like.
Use of this world what you will.
Transparent human.
After I learn to accept my life and my face as they are,
and not to suffer the pain of attachment of what I am not, there is a next part.
Accepting what we are, or have is not the last stop.
And it doesn’t really mean “just accepting” what it is.
It is just the first part of not longing for what’s missing.
We have this chance to make ourselves new, transform and improve our situations.
Starting with what it is, and redesigning ourselves as we want to be.
Without attachment, but not without intention.
The new me will be more compassionate and kind, more thoughtful and generous.
And taller.
I just realized it’s been a few weeks since I shared one of my saved “Haiku for Hearts” poem-stories from the Seattle Missed Connections. This one is a classic, and done in my favorite style – a mix of thoughtful self-reflection with a dose of humor. Lots of us wish we could be a little bit taller. 🙂